Aptenobytes

Postmasters! Turn off the damned bounceback

OK. For the N-th time in the last year I've weathered a bounceback storm. Some satan forsaken spammer spoofs my domain and sends out a couple of million spams, and I get to deal with a few thousand bouncebacks from dumbasses who haven't figured out that spammers use dictionary attacks.

The feature is broken. Stop using it. I beg you. Today's little storm cascading to a Rogers Blackberry. Thanks to Rogers absofuckinglutely stupid data plans, it probably cost us fifty or sixty bucks in data overages.

Yup. I'm pissed.

Oh, Come on Supremes.

What the fucking hell is wrong with the Supremes?

Today's decision was a disgrace. Canada Customs has been out of control, and a bookseller that has been our 'point person' in fighting their homophobic and anti-freedom crap has been told that if they want to fight the Canadian government with it's bottomless pockets in court, they have to do it out of their own pockets.

Little Sisters during it's best year ever made a profit of 25,000$. A court case that goes to the Supreme Court can cost up to 2$ million.

Canada's New Government recently cut the program that once upon a time paid for challenges like this. The Court Challenges Program was a smart and useful idea. What killed it was the fact that it was based on a single ideology. Here's where I stop vilifying the Courts for a decision that was bad from a political point of view (I haven't read it, so it may be OK from a legal POV), and rip into the politics....

Save The Cheerleader, Save The World...

I am truly enjoying the new hit show, Heroes. It's subversive in a very cool way. It's not trying to be subversive. But, it's the first show that just assumes that it's normal for people to be poor, to be drug addicts, to be rich, to be privileged, to be unprivileged.

It's addressed the pervasiveness of date rape, the various types of sexism that permeate society from the overprotection of Heidi to the ongoing abuse that nearly destroys Niki.

It's shown people from the various stratas of society, and treated them all like humans. Rich, poor, middle class. No parodies, no pretending that they're innately different. From working class cop with severe dyslexia to rich and ambitious poltiician, they're all shown as flawed humans, as fucked up I am. As fucked up as you are. No nobility in poverty. No romance to a needle stuck in a vein. No No pretense that wealth brings nobility or venality.

Nope. It's a story about normal people from all walks of life. Basically, it's a story that has the subversive message that ordinary people matter, and are capable of being extra-ordinary.

It's true. Evolution or not, we're all extra-ordinary.

OK, that's enough of being a media whore.

That's just wrong on Sooooo many levels

Deep-fried Coca-Cola

Say that with me. Deep-fried Coca Cola.

*Shudder*

Urgh.

I'm getting a little frustrated in my personal life right now. I've kicked ass, I've worked pretty much without a break since February, and I'm a little isolated and a little depressed. What I don't need right now is a bunch of people giving me advice on how I could be doing better. I need some acknowledgment that I have done a fucking awesome job getting the store open on time and then actually selling a fair amount in the first couple of months... maybe even patting me on the back.

Oh well. That's not how the people in my life deal with things....

See, this is the problem with right wingers...

The coverage of the Toronto municipal election by the Western Standard includes this lovely line:


And that leaves the worst for last. David "I love marching in the Pride Parade" Miller.

.

See, they have to be bigots. The fact that David Miller is a typical nanny statist who has never met a government program that can't be expanded, and who has mismanaged the City of Toronto in spectacular fashion is undeniable. Does the right deride him for his all too many real flaws? Yes, in passing, but they can't help themselves. They just have to go for the bigot angle to start.

MySpace must be stopped

Is there a reason that every MySpace page is butt-ugly? Really. I usually want to gouge out my eyes to remove the image burned into the retina, and once I've removed the image with an icepick, I want to keep plunging it in to stop my head from hurting trying to understand the incredibly bad navigation.

What on earth made that site turn into the monster juggernaut of socializing that it is?

Guess I should comment on Dick shoots Harry

What a dick! The guy broke rule #1. You never point a gun at anything you aren't willing to destroy.

Folks, gun safety is drilled into anyone who uses guns regularly. Whenever I teach someone how to shoot a gun, the first thing I tell them is that "guns are always loaded, and the safety is not on". Don't 'act' like they are loaded. Treat them exactly as if they are loaded. The second thing I teach them is that you don't put your finger on the trigger until you are looking through the sights, and know that whatever you shoot when you pull the trigger is something that you are prepared to destroy. I do a lot of trap shooting, and I understand exactly what happens as you swing your gun, and I can see how the shooting could have occurred. The fact is that what had to have happened is that the Vice President of the United States pulled the trigger without knowing what was in the path of his swing. That shows excruciatingly bad judgement

This shooting is not excusable for someone who is one heartbeat away from the Presidency. I could excuse it for someone whose judgement isn't so critical. From this man, it is not excusable. Not one little bit.

The man should resign. His judgement is flawed, and it is perhaps quite literally fatally flawed.

Election 2006 second post

OK, so I haven't been posting much. Sue me. I'm a jeweller in December swallowed up in the busiest season of the year, combined with having to fight two simultaneous battles. The first battle I've already discussed, the handgun ban. The second is also a reason to want to see the Liberals go down in flames, but it's more business oriented.

On November 25th, Bill C-259 got royal assent. That means it became law of the land. The act was entitled "an Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (elimination of the excise tax on jewellery)". One would assume that such an act would actually eliminate the excise tax on jewellery. Just one teensy little problem. The Budget Act of 2005 amended the Excise Tax Act also. After Bill C-259 passed in the House of Commons, the Liberals passed the budget act, which then leapfrogged past Bill C-259. Bill C-259 then stalled in the Senate until it passed in the dying days of this parliamentary session.

The amendment from the budget act did was two things. The first was to set out a schedule to reduce the excise tax on jewellery by 2% a year for five years until it disappeared. The second thing it did, and the truly nasty bit was to renumber the sections that apply to jewelllery from Schedule 1, Section 5a through 5b to Section(s) 5 - 5.3.

What did this insidious change do? It allowed the bureaucrats in the Excise Tax department to claim that since Bill C-259 changed only Section 5 of Schedule 1 of the Excise Tax. Not Sections 5.1 - 5.3 that the net effect was that it raised the excise tax on clocks back up to 10$, and removed the tax only on watches. Not any other type of jewellery.

Will the interpretation of the CRA stand? No. Any judge will interpret the will of parliament clearly, but in the meantime it is a clear example of the Liberal bureaucracy at work, obstructing the will of the elected members of a minority parliament.

I am so fucking incensed at yet another example of a bureaucracy that is willing to say 'fuck you' to parliament, that I shake with anger every time I think about it.

This is typical of how the Liberal Party operates. They have appointed these bureaucrats over the last umpteen years, and they do the bidding of their political masters.

As repugnant as the Conservatives are, I'd like to see them shake up the entrenched bureaucracy a bit.

Another reason that I'm going to bite the bullet and vote for a party I hate. :(

Election 2006 first post.

Unlike many anarchists, I vote. I'm not proud of it, and I understand the many arguments to be made for refusing to vote, but I don't agree with them. The government has too much control over our lives to not use one of the few tools we have to affect them.

So, you might ask, who are you going to vote for this election. It pains me to admit, but this election I am going to vote for a politician I hate, in order to defeat a politician I truly detest. I am going to vote for Laurie Hawn in order to defeat Anne McLellan.

What's that? What the hell is an anarchist doing voting for a right winger? That's just fucked up.

Yes. It is.

I am voting against the Liberal Party. I am voting against the Annie "get your guns" McLellan. There is no more perfect example of the statist than Ms. McLellan. Our Minister for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is pretty comfortable not only banning handguns, but also instituting all sorts of intrusions into our daily lives, like Bill C-74. It's a difficult decision for me, but it was sealed when Paul Martin announced that he was planning to ban handguns.

I've posted previously about my stance on the right to bear arms.... What the end result of this intrusion into my right to own guns will be I don't know. I do know that it affects me in a very direct way, and it is so much at odds with what I believe about personal responsibility, justice, and all of my core beliefs, that it trumps all for this election. I know that Denise Savoie will win in the other riding I am eligible to vote in, so if I could only vote here, I'd probably vote Green, or spoil my ballot.

However, with a race as close as the one in Edmonton, I feel compelled to do my best to oust the nasty piece of work that is Anne McLellan.

Blech. I suspect that on January 23rd I'll need more than one drink before I go to vote. Trading a larger evil for a smaller one leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

I may change my mind, but right now I am so mad about the handgun ban, that I am spitting tacks.