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The Week, Sold, Liberal Candidate, Etc
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 458
So, the week past, the restaurant (old) sold, and then not sold, and then sold, and then not.
I trust no one.
I meet the owner, Jack, of the Superette, he's swearing the restaurant sold. I have other information. We disagree.
This morning I run into him again, I was right, word on the street is that they're due to open in a couple of weeks.
Other news from the same family, their son, JR, the one that has a wife, 4 kids and lives in his mom's house, the one I worked with - 6 years of his management stylings, has decided to run for Liberal MP in the Kootenay-Columbia-Southern Rockies riding.
His mom is boosting him on Facebook, they're hoping to ride the coat-tails of Carny's popularity.
Now, if you've followed this blog any length of time you probably know my feelings about JR. The fact that he lives at home with his Mother, Wife and 4 Children would be a start. The fact that last summer he blew off working at a restaurant - the same restaurant that pays his salary, the restaurant that pays him $50, $60 dollars an hour to not show up, not manage, and when he did show up stood to make upwards of $400, $500 a day in tips (on top of his salary) - to be "on call" to stock shelves at a liquor store, well, that tells you all you need to know. The fact that he's still a rooting-tooting Elon Musk Fanboy should be warning enough.
Ambitious? Well, after a fashion, as long as it doesn't require he do any work. But he's "by default" the candidate the Liberals chose, unopposed, well, this is ridiculous. In a riding of just over 100, 000 people there are no less than 90, 000 people more qualified than he is. I'm offended, not just because I think Carny is the best choice for PM and really wanted to vote Liberal, but at the fact that the nepotism that saw him selected as Candidate represents the same level of qualifications and competence we're seeing south of the border.
I'm so spitting mad that I actually wrote a letter to the Liberal Party last weekend condemning their choice, no reply as of yet.
***
The son comes to visit for a couple of days, his new van kitted out for survival in the wilderness, the tree-planting season, his "Shagging Wagon" as I'd call it, only it needs a more glorious paint job...
He's filled it with boxes from the storage locker, a couple dozen, and my place, already cozy and untidy has come once again to resemble a home, "my home",...the broken-down boxes, filled with collections like my broken trumpet & trombone collection, my broken clock collection, "Mixed Media" as I'd call it, more neckties, broken watches, rocks (more rocks!!), dinosaur bones, etc, stuff that I have to deal with, soon, as there will be an annual inspection shortly and I'm in no ways prepared.
I marvel at the contents of the boxes, every "unboxing" reveals a trove of smashed and broken-down treasures, projects that will occupy my retirement long past the sunset years... unpacking these and sorting the contents will take a couple of weeks, for the moment I'm basking in the glorious chaos of what is feeling like home, like indulging in the luxury of an extra-rancid fart in an unventilated space, the man-turned-inside-out, although I'm committed, a box or two per day and I'll be on top of this in a week, much of it bound for the trash, I got this...
And, for the moment this is it...
Galvarino
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 130
On the list of History's biggest bad-asses, add Galvarino, a Mapuche Warrior that had his hands cut off by the Spanish.
Undaunted he replaced them with knives tied to his wrists and rallied his tribe to battle ...
Well, read the rest here on his Wiki Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvarino
(Ooops, already posted this in 2019. Still a badass and so worth the repost)
Orange Cat
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1117
They started off innocently enough.
A fat orange tabby, off on some adventures. AI generated nonsense designed to keep you from reading the news or your friends feed or doing something, anything more productive than this. Facebook, or Meta.
Fat Orange Tabby pulling vegetables, cooking dinner, going on a date.
Hundreds of these videos, more than I could watch if I sat at the computer or on my phone 24 hours a day.
The cut-scenes give it away, different cats (same Fat Orange tabby, but if you look you might spot differences), different kitchens, different and occasionally nonsensical vegetables, backgrounds. The models aren't preserved, the videos are just generated 1 scene at a time and then stitched together with a "Plot".
The plot has been growing darker. The cat, as you might guess, gets tired of eating vegetables. Orange cat befriends chicken, then gets in fight, sharpening knife upon a whetstone (or AI's poor imagining of this), Orange cat eating chicken.
Same again, this time with mice, orange cat throws a bomb into a hole in the wall, mice pour out, orange cat rides home on a bicycle with a basket full of mice, makes dinner. Mice swimming in the soup. Orange cat rescues rabbit, eats rabbit. Or catches fish (with a bomb) or a thousand other trivial details, the story the same, Orange cat finds pig, cow, etc, etc, and finds ways to eat it. Every prompt is reused a thousand times, and the results are stitched together in a narrative.
The plot thickens. All is the same, only Orange cat - when he has dinner made, calls a friend with his cellphone and invites them over for dinner. Here comes rooster/lion/tiger/panther with a case of beer. They toast the beer before dinner and then rooster/lion/panther etc falls over, clearly drugged. Orange cat whets the knife again and cooks them up for his next dinner...
Or skins them and pretends to be a lion....
There are thousands of these, every one different, every one the same. Sometimes they have subtitles, in English, Chinese, most often they don't.
They evolve in the course of days, Lion/Tiger/Panther get muscular, ride motorcyles with sunglasses and lots of gold chains.
Same story.
Now the story takes a twist, all the animals begin protesting, "Arrest Orange Cat", "Orange Cat to Jail", duck as prosecutor, lawyer, or doctor after Orange cat takes a beating.
Orange cat in jail in chains, Orange cat sobbing.
The sound effects - the same music, every video, the “guffaw” you hear in a lot of the “comedy” videos, or a psychopathic baby laugh at the end, or maybe something a little generic, but it’s always the same.
I’m coming to the conclusion that they are encouraging some sort of revolution, Fat Orange Cat is a metaphor for US Politics, devouring strangers and then his friends, that somehow, subliminally, entire populations are being groomed to revolution by inane AI videos on Facebook. There's no other explanation.
In the end that's how the war will be won, by a population so dumbed down with distractions, AI nonsense, that it won't be common sense or decency that leads them to revolution, it will be a dumb AI Orange Cat video when everyone decides Fat Orange Cat needs to get what it deserves...
Treason
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 567
Of course, the person that immediately springs to mind is Danielle Smith, who's been pleading on US media for Trump to intervene in our federal elections process.
This, of course, is unacceptable, and continues a fine Albertan (and increasingly American) tradition of "Shoot First...", or "Easier to ask for forgiveness...". On her knees in Mar-A-Lago. This is the kindest way to frame it. In any other terms it would be called Treason, but Alberta's long been ahead of the curve in "Hypernormalisation" - excusing and rationalizing corruption and abuse when done by it's elected leaders.
Her endorsement of Pierre Poilievre should be taken as an endorsement of Mark Carny, Poilievre, conspicuously silent since Trudeau stepped down, the villain has lost his nemesis, his semi-earnest laughable attempts to distance himself from Trump (and Trump's attempts to indirectly praise him by saying he "gets along with liberals" - counting on his reviled Northern reputation to steer voters into Poilievre's camp).
Then there's the newspapers, the Edmonton Urinal and Democracy Imperilled, the Irrational Post, all of which are majority owned by US interests and have increasingly started to throw shade on Carny's reputation, to rationalize Smith's decisions to campaign for Canada in the US, to slowly (they hope) bring people around to the viewpoint that being annexed (never a state, more a Puerto Rico, wherein our resources our up for plunder without the obligations a Government usually takes for it's citizenry) would not be a bad thing, maybe even a good thing...
Columnists, such luminaries as the convicted criminal Conrad Black, or the sock-puppet Rick Bell, all trying to steer a largely ignorant base into their camps....
Smith, her inane list of demands presented to Carny, her threats to "hold a referendum" - or, given her leadership, and - ha - Alberta - I'll ignore the spell-check and spell it as it should be - "referendumb" - on what? Whether Alberta should "Secede" or "Join the US"?
You could put it all down to just more inanity in the news cycle, more idiocy, more distraction and you'd be right, but she's a very populist flavour of stupidity that resonates with Albertans.
The ongoing dismantling of healthcare - "Privatization" she styles it, in which the communal assets of the government - Hospitals, Utilities, etc - built and paid for by the people of the province, are sold off to private interests, with the argument that this will "reduce costs and improve efficiency". This is, of course, and outright lie, as has been proven time and again.
She's a traitor, both to her province and her country. And I recall with fondness those days of moral certainty when we'd as a nation hang them as an example. Now, well, our liberalness in these issues is as much a problem as a certain brand of Conservativeness south of the border.
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