I subscribe to The Economist magazine. That’s not a plug for the magazine. It’s just a statement of fact.
As an aside, The Economist likes to call itself a newspaper. That’s fine. It can call itself that if it wants to, but that doesn’t mean that I have to.
My definition of a newspaper includes all three of the following criteria:
Categories: Fitness Tags: exercise, gym, The Economist
Maybe it’s just a function of my advancing age, but I’m convinced that the people in the world around me are all getting younger; everyone, that is, except for girls in their late teens.
As an aside, I feel the need to say at this point that I have a rule. If you are 20, you can, without fear of recrimination, call any female under the age of 16 a “girl.” However, to maintain political correctness, you must use the term “young woman” for females 16 to 18, inclusive, and “woman” for females older than 18.
However, according to another component of my rule, if you are older than 20, the “young woman” and “woman” thresholds advance by a year for every ten years you are beyond 20. I’m 57, so I can get away with calling any female under the age of 19 a girl. I still have to call 19-year-olds “young women,” but I don’t have to call them women until they pass the age of 21. Once I hit 60, I will be able, in full political correctness, to include the entire range of teenage years under the “girl” label. But I digress.
I’m not a pet person. So far, I’ve never owned a pet throughout my adult life. I don’t expect that to change before I die. If someone wants to stick a pet in the coffin with me when I’m dead, that’s up to him or her. I won’t know or care.
As a child, the only pets I had were turtles. If memory serves, they lived an average of 27.3 hours after being brought home. I shouldn’t be trusted with non-human animals.
I have nothing against the non-Homo sapiens species. I think they should be free to live their lives—and more power to them—but I’d rather they leave me out of it. In fact, I think there should be a new law in the land. Cities are for people. The country is for animals. If they stay out of my urban areas, I’ll stay out of their bucolic boonies. Deal?
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: dogs, pets, work like a dog, working like a dog
A lot of the trucks that ply our city streets bear the mottos of the companies that own them. It’s so common that you probably often don’t even notice the words that are zooming by or, in the case of Toronto during rush hour, inching by during those rare moments when they are moving at all. Well, the other day I saw a truck sporting a slogan that seemed bizarre and so implausible as to be virtually impossible to be true.
The words on the truck read:
Cintas
The Uniform People
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: mottos, slogans, uniform people
I gave blood today. That’s not terribly odd because I’ve done it many times in my life. Counting today, I’ve donated 136 times.
Before you ask, here in Canada blood donations are all voluntary, so I haven’t made any money off my donations. I keep looking for change under the seat cushions in the recovery area where they give you coffee and cookies, but, so far, I’ve come up empty.
Telling you the number of times I’ve donated blood is not intended as boasting. I think everyone should do one good deed in his or her life and that’s mine. It is just to say that I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to the process of donating blood.
I know absolutely nothing about hematology, but I am an expert at lying back and allowing someone to poke a needle into one of my veins. Or is it one of my arteries? I don’t know. I’m also not an expert on the cardiovascular system.
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: blood, blood donations, Canadian Blood Services, donating blood
I just got back from a business trip to Orlando. Here’s an observation from that trip: If you are flying to Orlando without any small children you are going to be the one of the very few people to not “pre-board.”
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: Orlando, pre-board, pre-boarding
The Beaver, a Canadian history magazine, is changing it’s name. As of the April 1, 2010 issue, the new name will be “Canada’s History.”
Granted, “The Beaver” is not the world’s most creative or colorful magazine name, but it sure as hell beats “Canada’s History” on both counts. Is there a more pedestrian title on the face of this planet than “Canada’s History?” I don’t think so. Some may equal it for banality, but none can exceed it.
So, why are they changing the name? According to the press release, “the name change signals a clear direction for the future of the magazine.” Ho hum.
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: beavers, The beaver, ™
On December 30, when the Canadian media were busy getting ready to celebrate New Year’s and they were also tied up reporting on some Canadians going after a hockey championship—nothing is more important in Canada than hockey—our Prime Minister prorogued parliament until March. If you’re not familiar with the word prorogue, I’m not sure of it’s origin, but I think it’s from the Latin for “when the going get’s tough, the tough shut the frigging place down and hide in a hole.”
A few Canadians were upset about our government running roughshod over our democratic institutions. And they said so. After a group of about 170 professors from across Canada put their names to a letter condemning the prorogation, Tony Clement, the federal Minister of Industry, said that the only people who cared about the government proroguing parliament were the elites and the “chattering classes.”
I find it ironic that a member of the federal cabinet—whose salary from his government job is $230,000, and who, as a member of cabinet, shares with his 38 cabinet colleagues executive powers over the affairs of state that no other Canadians have—would belittle other people for being members of the elite. But never mind that.
Categories: Canada Tags: Canada, parliament, prorogation, prorogue, prorogued, proroguing
