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!

Those Deadly Swine II

Sorry about the phantom post.
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So you may be wondering why I am posting with such regularity. There is a simple answer. One that I think will answer pretty much all variations and details of the above question. The answer is this:

Not sure really....

Glad I could help.
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So apparently H1N1, the dreaded Swine Flu, is a pandemic. As in, like an epidemic, but worse, and with more screaming involved. As far as how deadly it is, it kills nowhere near as many as the regular flu's 1500 or so per year ( not sure what the actual numbers are involved with the Swine version, but from what I understand there has been one death so far in my area and a small handful across Canada... I'll get back to that in a minute). So it's not the actual deadlyness of it... apparently it's how many people are catching it. Apparently it is effecting way more people than the normal flu. This says to me (stop me if I'm wrong here) that each individual case is LESS dangerous than the regular flu. And if it's just the number of people being effected, where is the panic about the common cold...?

HOWEVER...

There have been a lot of talk about making the Swine Flu shot manditory. As in Compulsory with a capital Comp. To throw this in perspective: AIDS is considered probably the nastiest virus we have going these days, being extremely virulent and very determined to cause a long, slow, unpleasant death, and there is no cure, however there are a number of hideously expensive and also nasty treatments. AIDS has almost by itself destroyed Africa, an entire continent... Cancer is caused by the breakdown of genetic matter within the cell, and as such we all will eventually get it unless we die of something else first. And of course the regular flu, which we discussed earlier. None of these qualify as serious enough to curb our freedoms for our own good. Neither were the Bird Flu, SARS, the West Nile Virus (which I and my family caught, nasty but generally flulike), and any of the other horrifying viral threats to the world in the past 10 years. Nope, they all are small potatoes compared to the Swine Flu.

In actual fact, experts are not even actually worried about what the Swine Flu can do, much like the Bird Flu, it is essentially just a regular flu for the moment. BUT, they are worried about what it could mutate into... you know, if it actually became deadly and was already as widespread as this, then we'd really be in trouble... yadda yadda yadda. Of course, mutation doesn't work like that, suddenly and across populations of trillions of individual viruses... it works, by definition, in an infinitessimally small majority. and of course, it also works in any of an infinite variety of ways and at any time. Further, if it is that likely to mutate into a more dangerous form, it is just as likely to mutate into a less dangerous form. In other words, it's not deadly (relatively speaking) now, it most likely won't become deadly, and if it does it most likely won't stay deadly for long.

So the government has decided to force us all to take the Swine Flu vaccination, but not because it is any more dangerous than any other virus. Cute.

Further, Flu shots are only minimally effective because the flu in any form, mutates often. By this I don't mean into Horrifying Super Viruses, just regular, relatively innocuous mutations. Normally when the head honchos in charge decide to make a new flu shot for the coming year, they GUESS how the flu is likely to mutate and they make a vaccination for that. They are always wrong as to how it will turn out (at least so far) and because the flu is a cockroachly tough little bug the vaccination has to be ultra-specific to work.

To recap further- the government has decide to suspend our freedoms to prevent a virus that is not especially deadly with a vaccination that likely will not work. As I said before, cute.

So why are they pulling this nonsense? I mean, we are in a massive economic slump, our deficits are ballooning out of control, and we have bigger fish to fry. Do we actually need the expense for no significant reason? Couldn't we use that money, for example, to give our idiot politicians another huge undeserved raise? Maybe give it away to GM to help them take jobs away from us and encourage them to also avoid the best people for the decision making jobs?

I'm not even going to suggest they use it to build more recycling plants. For one, I already have suggested it, and second, there is no way our politicians would choose that over an undeserved raise.

No, in my humble opinion, seeing as how our own government is not the only one following this anane line of reasoning, it is the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the vaccines. They are the self-professed experts in the field, they are the ones which would be doing any research which might contradict these ideas, they are the ones which train our doctors (the second line of experts one would guess) and they are the only ones who are likely to benefit from it financially. So they are bossing our governments around much like the auto manufacturers were not too long ago, whether anyone admits it or not. Big Pharma no longer works for our governments and us, it's the other way around. They are using us as research subjects. Just screwing around to see what happens. Because they can and because it'll make them some fast cash. They've been doing it for a while- it's a matter of public record our governments were complicit in experimenting on the black populatin of the 1930's with syphilis, there was the MK Ultra experiments in Quebec in the 60's, and the laws governing Indian Reserves outlaw their right to refuse medical treatment or experimentation whatsoever.
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So on the off chance you think the government will actually listen to our opinion, maybe we should say no. You know, unless you have some kind of health problem which would mean flu is a serious risk for you. Ultimately if a majority of the population refuses the shot, there is nothing the government can actually do about it. Think about it, it's like voting... it's your democratic responsibilty.
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You know, or just go along. I'm sure Big Pharma is much more interested in our welfare than the government, and they'll probably let us vote for their CEOs and so on. Really.
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Well, that's enough ranting for now, I have a Man in Black knocking at my door who doesn't know about my security cameras... he thinks I can't see his 14 buddies and the stunguns. Hee hee hee...
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Bye bye,
The Schismatic Lexiphage.

Those deadly swine

The Almighty Dollar

Hello again, greetings from the Lair...
Flying in the face of convention I have decided to post again in the same month, prompting widespread angst among the Worldwide Circle of Evil.
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So I know you're all expecting me to lay the metaphorical beating to our lovable premier Dalton McGuinty. You would be right to expect this. A year or two ago Dalton warned us that we "may" fall into a deficit in the neighbourhood of a few hundred million dollars... in those short months he has upgraded that possibility of a minor deficit to ABSOLUTELY, CERTAINLY, THE BIGGEST DEFICIT ONTARIO HAS EVER SEEN. This is quite something considering the heady days of the Bob Rae NDP, who single handedly brought Ontario to the brink of bankruptcy. Well folks, McGuinty's possible little deficit is DOUBLE the size of Bob Rae's biggest shortfall. The important thing to remember, stammers McGuinty, is that this is NOT HIS FAULT. A great comfort to us all no doubt. Of course spending money like a crack-addicted lottery winner has nothing to do with it... the $4.8 billion in program spending? Not an issue. Spending $650 million on the goofy Swine Flu paranoia? Not an issue. Handing billions over to auto companies to facilitate their moving jobs to Mexico? Also not an issue. In fact, despite the world economy being down by 12% (which accounts for maybe half of the problem) and Mike Harris, who has been out of office for more than half a decade, what is the problem, Mr. McGuinty?

"Er... well... harmonizing the sales taxes is the most important move we can make for Ontario's economy."

"Errrr... Okay Mr. McGuinty... not that that answered my question, but what do you mean? How is this so big and important a step? What will it do to help business?"

"Er... Uhhhmmmm... harmonizing the sales taxes is the most important step we can take for Ontario's economy."

"Yeah but how? This just sounds like another enormous tax grab. It sounds like it'll terribly maim businesses to save them two lines of paperwork. How's this gonna dig us out of our financial hole?"

"Errrrrrmmmmm... harmonizing the sales taxes is the biggest and best thing we can do for Ontario's economy."

"Ooooooookay... thanks, Weiner Boy."
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Also on the Weenie's agenda: increasing the minimum distance between a power windmill and residential space to 2 kilometers. This is to reduce noise and vibrations, which apparently are not caused by traffic, subways, trains, air conditioners, heating systems, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, stereos, weather, playing the drums, naturally flowing bodies of water, wind chimes, and people living in the area in general. And of course we can't get engineers to minimize these problems. No, much better to subject our population to unscrubbed coal pollution and toxic waste. Much less of a hazard.
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Also apparently on the Education Premier's table is an ongoing campaign to remove the Elder Smurf from Autism therapy. Apparently despite his rapidly advancing speech and social skills he is not progressing in any manner and should be removed in a few months as keeping him there would be unethical.
Despite the Circle of Evil's assertions to the contrary, the Elder Smurf is advancing rapidly- he is mostly toilet trained, can dress himself with minimal assistance (he needs fasteners and socks done for him, and a little help with his arms and shoes). The Younger Smurf is also advancing rapidly, although there have been many issues with dumping whole pitchers of milk on the floor that have been giving me a slight psychotic break. No biggie.
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Welllll... I'd like to complain a bit more but the loonies who run our utopia have given me far too much to work with, so I'm gonna go watch zombie movies and eat spaghetti in bed. Ahhh, luxury.
Talk atcha soon,
The Rancorous Lexiphage.

My longest sabbatical yet

Hello everyone... seems people have been looking at my leavings even when I wasn't, prompting me back to the director's seat for another episode... Sorry about the little vacation I took; I assure you that although it was a blogging vacation my time was full of other death-defying challenges so I didn't get lazy (quite).
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So, to bring you up to speed, in the past year the smurfs have exceeded the racial average of three apples tall... The elder smurf is mostly toilet trained and dresses himself with minimal assistance, the younger smurf has been pushing the toilet training but is still a creature of diaperial habit. However she has been learning to fix herself snacks- and can pour herself a drink of milk or butter a slice of bread with a modicum of supervision and mess. Both have been talking much more; the elder using sentences in excess of four words when in the right mood, and two words together whenever he likes. The younger is still using single and double words, but can recite the alphabet or the numbers up to 30.
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I am still single but no longer chronically; I get out upon occasion with persons of the female persuasion despite the efforts of the Neighbour Lady, perhaps once a month or so... I still telecommunicate on a pretty regular basis with my P.A.L., who has recently shed her female companion to some extent or other and is therefore in more or less the same scenario as I... with a similar Neighbour Lady (P.A.N.L. for short)... perhaps we can work out an exit strategy we can share with anyone who happens to find themselves in the Middle East.
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Recently had another battle with the Cable Company; not sure why they insist on these regular duels on bridges over lava (oops, magma)... but perhaps instead of vanquishing them in this method I should buy some form of repellant. Speaking of evil cable company schemes, you have probably heard of the recent bid by the CRTC and the cable companies to raise tax money for the purpose of supporting local TV despite the fact that they already squander a similar levy... Of course when I give someone money for a specific purpose and they squander it on buying themselves a new stereo, my solution is to immediately give them more money... we can trust them with this one, folks... (ahem)... Of course this has nothing to do with the fact the TV system has been switching over to digital... analog antennas being the most obvious competition for local TV, now that that is more or less eliminated they have time on their hands they need spending money for.
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Speaking of evil idiots, Dalton McGuinty has fallen in line with the tradition of Jean Cretien by losing a billion dollars on a pointless and incomplete project strangely remeniscent of the HRDC "What's a billion" era and their big-brother computer. Apparently Ontario has been working on a province-wide OHIP database which will contain all of our medical information... to construct this they handed out a billion worth of untendered and unsupervised contracts to various parties with no effective obligations attached to it, and assumed that a functioning system would magically result. Of course handing our our private information to hundreds of people without that level of supervision couldn't possibly be a bad thing, especially seeing as how we all will still have trouble accessing out own health records but captains of industry have their own copies now available for a light read on the toilet if they wish. Let's hope they occasionally supervise their employees with our information, Weiner Boy won't do it.
Of course the thing to remember here is that whatever happens, however this stuff is misused or lost, it isn't McGuinty's fault. That's why Joe Voter should keep him on deck for re-election- throwing our money and private information out to whoever feels like having it is much better than allowing anyone to build a Muslim school. Ahem.
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Well that's a fairly solid recap after nearly a year on hold... I'll try to keep up a somewhat faster rate of posting in the impending future... Ciao for now, The Abstruse and Loquacious Lexiphage. :)

Blind Faith in Democracy

Hiya everyone.
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So it seems a lot of you were expecting a blog from me prior to the federal election... I thought very heavily about it, however, it came down to the fact that, as you know, if I cannot offer a positive course of action I prefer to refrain entirely from desparaging comments. Since ther is no possible course of action for you now, I can offer lots of desparagement without fear of kharmic reprisal.
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Let's look at Canada's political parties one at a time and you may see my dilemma:
The Conservative Party of Canada & Stephen Harper:
Stephen Harper is a dink. He breaks promises on a fairly regular basis after campaigning originally on a platform of accountability. His one saving grace is that being somewhat fiscally responsiblish it will take him quite a while to plunge the country into chaos, and before then we'll have another election.
Stephane Dion & the Liberal Party:
Dion is an idiot. I'm not talking about his mediocre English. Follow this one: What is the difference between $56 billion and $40 billion? According to Dion, nothing. See, his Green Shift is supposed to be have a zero cost, because, having increased our tax base by $40 billion in Green Shift taxes, he will then reduce our income taxes by $56 billion, which, for some reason, will not leave us $16 billion in the hole. On top of which, he has a gigantic bag of election goodies which apparently will not raise this $16 billion to a larger number. He does admit ther emay be a possibility he'll run a deficit. Well duh!
Jack Layton and the NDP:
I may have mentioned that bit about Layton being in Toronto council and protesting against himself and his cronies by hiring OCAP nut jobs to throw bricks at cops. This sort of behaviour maaaaybe isn't what we need at the top of the country. 'Nuff said.
Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois:
As should be obvious, this party's stated purpose is to pillage the rest of Canada of every last wheedling thing for the good of Quebec, and then continue to use our currency and have us send them transfer payments. Yeah. Right.
Whatsername and the Green Party:
Yeah, I know I should know her name. I ain't gonna vote for these guys because their whole premise on reducing GG emissions (their whole reason d'etre) is a cap and trade system. This means the following: Big Evil Polluting Company (BEPC, inc) has a limit put on the amount they pollute. For every ton of pollution they produce, they must pay soem money to a non-polluting company (NPC, inc). When BEPC sees this they will apparently decide NOT to purchase the pollution credits from NPC... if they do, they will NOT decide to raise their prices to compensate, and as a result the consumer will NOT be the only one who loses money on the deal... and pollution will magically disappear. Of course Big Evil won't take the easy way out at no effective cost to them... they're not that evil! Honest! Uh-huh.
The Christian Heritage Party:
Look, I'm a good(ish) Christian boy as much as the next guy, but the goofy religious paranoia which pervades this country right now is akin to McCarthyism, and admitting that you did something you thought Jesus would do is roughly the same politically as saying you are in a sexual relationship with both Hitler and an HIV positive kangaroo, and that you go out Thursday nights to eat live babies and smoke crack. Until people put down the pitchforks and calm down, this party is doomed to fringe types and protest votes. Sorry Aunt V.
Not Voting:
I'm not even going to dignify that with a response.
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So, ultimately while I voted, I didn't like doing it.
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McGuinty is up to his usual goofiness working on a 'smart-card' driver's license which doubles as a passport for crossing the US border. Of course, they found the lowest bidder and signed up for a pass designed for transporting goods and livestock, which apparently can't be used to differentiate one face from another. I'm sure Homeland Security will be thrilled, as will the Joe Taxpayer when he is mistakenly barred from the USD in case he is carrying Mad Cow disease.
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Well, I'd love to stay and chat but I'm a busy guy; I have tons of pointless paperwork Weiner Boy wants me to fill out so he can file it under 'G'; I have to lead some Men in Balck on a flase trail away from the Lair, and I am looking into designs for my power windmill.
Fare thee well,
the Contrapuntal Lexiphage

General Goverment Idiocy

Bonjourno, fellow blogophiles, how's it hanging?
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I got a lot of ground to cover, so bear with me.
First up is a movement which isn't directly from the upper idiots-er- echelons of government, but as usual they are involved... Apparently one of the local school boards has decided bottled water is now BAD. Their reasoning goes something like this: All the water bottles are piling up in trash cans all around the schools, and they take up too much room and kind of make a mess. Therefore, instead of putting up some recycling bins or maybe increasing the numbers of them, we ban the bottled water. This scant months after they also banned pop from schools on the premise that it is junk food... So kids cannot bring bottled water or canned or bottled pop to school. Also banned are glass bottles for much the same reason as plastic ones, which disqualifies most juices. However, it is considered against their policy to send a kid to school without a packaged drink and expect them to drink from the water fountains... So, pretty much all that's left are cartons of milk (which are expected to remain cold and fresh in a sweaty gym bag) or juice boxes which contain primarily water (not regulated for any level of filtration), refined sugar, artificial flavours and colours, and a single drop of some sort of fruit juice so they can put "Made with Real Juice!" on the label.
To recap: You must send a drink with your child to school. Failure to do so is child abuse and against school policy. You cannot send water, pop or juice in a bottle or can of any kind. Your choices therefore are sour milk or unfiltered water mixed with industrial chamicals. This may be detrimental to your child's health, but at least we won't have to put out an extra blue box.
The way the upper levels of government are involved is this: One of the arguments against bottled water is that recycling facilities cannot handle the volume. Currently Ontario throws 40% of their recycling in the trash because of this, but you aren't supposed to because it's bad for the environment when someone other than the government does not recycle. Of course, instead of giving car companies tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build factories & create jobs which they will cancel in a few months (while still taking the money) the government could use this cash to build extra recycling plants and finally handle all of the volume. This would create lasting jobs and pay for itself with the extra raw materials created (currently there is a massive demand for recycled raw material which is not being fulfilled). This would of course be good for the environment, solve several problems in a long term way, and pay for itself. Which of course brings us back to a core fact of my blogging career: the government does not want to solve any problems- instead it wants to appear to fight against them whilst never solving them, thus preserving the problem for use later. More political points to be made that way.
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Stephen Harper was voted in with a platform which included a law which prevents the ruling party from calling an election on an early date selected for political advantage. Apparently now, he says, the rule does not apply because he left himself a loophole so he can ignore it. I don't know about you, but when I voted for greater accountability in government I didn't mean 'except when you can get away with screwing over the voters'... maybe I was the only one.
Of course, now the Dion and Layton are jumping on the bandwagon; the only thing the three parties agree on is that it isn't actully the fault of their party (it's one or both of the others) but that somehow Canadians want another election, to create another weaselly minority government with another mediocre-at-best prime minister at the top.
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Another one for Harper: Remember not too long ago when Harper was telling us that Arctic Sovereignty was an issue? Apparently it isn't any more. When asked about it recently he maintained there isn't a problem, and that the only reason people think there is is because they listen to scholars and the media. Errrrrrr... Who the hell else are we supposed to listen to, Stevie? Livestock? Cashiers? You? Oh, right, you gave us the idea in the first place... but that doesn't count.
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As a last little dig, apparently Weiner Boy McGuinty is not at fault for not inspecting the tainted Maple Leaf meat everyone is afraid of now. I mean, I know it's his job to hire the guys involved and send them on over, at least indirectly, but he's to busy hiding from the media so they don't catch him saying something else stupid. Thanks, Dalton!
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Well, I gotta go pick up the Smurfs from school, I'll fill you in on them next blog. Say bye bye to Starfleet Command for me, and I'll see you on Hollywood Squares!
Later,
The Purgatorial Lexiphage

The Lexiphage Heads out West

Greetings from afar, fellow... er... fellows...
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Well for the last few weeks your truly has been fleeing the powers that be by swapping provinces on a regular basis; this apparently has been effective because I have not received a hydro bill or government leaflet since...
Although I surveyed a number of provinces and one state in my sabbatical, I spent the greatest fraction in BC as it was furthest away from Dalton McGuinty. The large number of mountains not only hid me from spy sattelites near the horizon line, but also obscured the signals from the various sensor devices and the ELF transmitter employed by the Circle of Evil that runs the world. Also, BC is populated by a disproportionate number of hot women. No down side, right?
Whilst in BC I visited a number or relatives and freinds, including a short stint across the border for an enlightening visit with my P.A.L. who, more than I realized, shares some of that down-home Lexiphagey philosophy you all seem to enjoy for some reason. Apparently the Circle of Evil has been on her tail for some time (well, on quite on it, that's her girlfreind's job, but near it anyway...), and when they realized we were in close proximity they sent messages to the U.S. border guards to harrass us until the Men in Black could arrive to finish the job. Fortunately we evaded their encircling grip by a hair's breadth and survived to spread our dissent in our respective fashions... Take that, evil!
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The Lexiphage is finally the proud owner of his first solar panel, which, when combined with rechargable batteries and a lot of adapter cables, allows me to strike back at the Hydro Thugs with a small measure of vengeance. Eventually, a wide assortment of these will keep my Lair all nice and electromagnetically cloaked from prying eyes, during daylight anyway, and will be supplemented with windmills, water wheels, and a geothermal dynamo which draws its power from the hot air generated by our political leaders (politicothermal?).
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Thanks everyone for the kudos on my seditious plans last post, I hope to develop these plans over time and upon further consultation with my expanding Circle of Something Other Than Evil. Anyhoo, I should take off, there's a targeting laser attempting to paint me through the window, and I want to avoid the attendant guided missiles. Talk atcha soon,
The Electromagnetically Inducted Lexiphage.