Category: News

Had this been an actual post… blah, blah, blah. Just trying to figure out some audio fiddling for the site for future posts. Wish me luck. This is actually something that I’ve had clunking around in my cranium for some time now but never had the opportunity to actually play around with until now.

See? Even getting laid off can have an upside. 😛

(more…)

Quit your damn whining. You heard me. All you bozos out there that are moaning and groaning, like a bunch of homeless mill operators at a TO budget handout, about how the big bad lottery retailers cheated and got a bunch of cash from all you honest suckers. Yes, it seems that some of those guys and gals in those little kiosks in the mall managed to up and bugger off with someplace in the neighbourhood of at least — yes, at LEAST — a hundred million loonies in the last six or seven years, from ’99 to ’06…

Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin’s report, A Game of Trust, revealed yesterday that the lottery corporation enjoyed a “buddy buddy” relationship with retailers and left no paper trail that can be followed to trace the winnings back to their rightful owners.

“Unscrupulous” lottery-ticket retailers have collected at least $100 million in fraudulent claims since 1999, Marin reported yesterday.

The fraud continued for years, in part because of a “hopelessly conflicted” agency that allowed the practice to continue and ignored an early warning from a London case, the ombudsman said.

And now everybody and their dog is bitching and moaning about getting ripped off by the big, friendly OLGC that was supposed to exist just so that they could become millionaires and retire to someplace with a very un-Canadian climate some day.

Piss off.

I’m sick and tired of hearing about how evil the redneck retirement fund has become. Well guess what, boneheads? IT WAS ALWAYS A SCAM TO BEGIN WITH!! A lottery isn’t about raising money for charities, it’s not for covering the cost of some government projects, and it’s sure as hell not there to give you any damn money.

It’s a tax, plain and simple. It’s a tax on people that are bad at math. So either get smart enough to figure out what your odds are of getting hit by lightning while skull-schtupping Pam Anderson, or shut the hell up.

Well, it looks like we can finally look forward to something other than a one-horse race for who is going to get the nod to run for the Tories in London North Centre whenever the writ that everybody keeps talking about gets dropped.  Good thing, too.  For a while there it was looking like “acclaim” would be the word of the day and call me odd, but I don’t think that such an outcome is ever a good idea; there should always be some alternative, even if you don’t particularly like it.

While Tom Weihmayr isn’t going to take a run at it this time (kind of a drag, that; since I was hoping he’d try again), Paul Van Meerbergen (left; who jumped into the race a while ago) is getting joined in the race for the Tory nod by Allison Graham (right).  Some of you might know Graham from her writing the Freeps’ People You Know column but she also operates a business-networking advice firm called Elevate Services and Strategic Development.  More can be found in the Freeps, right here.

Now all we need to do is decide who is best equipped to bump off Glen Pearson and represent us in Ottawa…

Wow. How the hell did this happen? Some of you out there really need to find yourselves some hobbies. I just looked at the left sidebar and noticed that there have been just over twenty thousand of you pop by here since I started shooting my mouth off on this space about ten months ago. I have to admit, I never saw that coming…

Somehow — and I’m still not sure exactly how — what started off as an idea to create an online community ended up being a pressure valve for all the frustrations that had built up in me over the previous years of federal Fiberal skullduggery, idiotic social engineering, politically correct Orwellianisms and whatever the hell else…

Well, the community hasn’t quite taken off yet, even though I’ve made something of a habit of fiddling with the script (see it here and feel free to give an opinion) but the blog seems to have become some sort of addiction or something. I’ve babbled about everything from Afghanistan to SSM and even covered a nomination vote.

Funny how things work out, ain’t it?

I just want to say thanks to everyone that helped me get here; from those that encouraged me to keep shooting my mouth off (you know who you are) to everyone that pops by here to check out what bubbles up from the muck and the mire at the bottom of my brain. I couldn’t have done it without ya.

Now I have to go find something to get pissy about…

Our country has lost another defender and witness to history today. Lloyd Clemett, one of the last three of Canada’s veterans of the Great War, passed away in Toronto late in the evening on Wednesday, the 21st of February, 2007. He was one hundred and seven years old.

Mr. Clemett’s passing leaves only two living veterans of the First World War remaining in all of Canada, one of whom will be given a full state funeral upon his passing, in accordance with the unanimous decision of the House of Commons in November of 2006.

“It was something you had to do, so you went and you did it” was the explanation Clemett offered when asked why he went to war, his son David Clemett said in an interview.

“It’s really something that he never elaborated on, he never talked about when I was growing up. It was just a fact, that at some point in time he was in the First World War.”

The only indication his father had served in the conflict was a brass-bound war chest containing his service uniform, tucked away in the basement of the family home in north Toronto. It was only in recent years that Clemett shared his war stories with family.

Like so many others anxious to join their countrymen in the trenches of France, Clemett told the army he was 18 – the official enlistment age – when he signed his papers in January 1916.

More on the loss here, here and here.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

–For The Fallen, Laurence Binyon, 1914

Holy crap, that was harder than I thought.  What should have taken only an hour or so ended up — thanks to some of the slowest throughput I’ve ever seen on a T1 connection — being an all-Goddamned-day undertaking.  On the bright side, though; it’s finally over.

The new software seems to be working fine and dandy so far and well… I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  So, now that all that happy horseshit’s out of the way, look for something a little more… normal from me tomorrow… 😀