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Garage Sales 2010 - Week 8
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1878
They are every where.
Dozens of pages in Kijiji and on Craigslist. The Calgary Herald even has a few, in between the hundreds of spam ads posted by ShopLocal (Their website has been flooded with spam for over a year, and is next to useless. Clicking on an ad brings you to a screen that tells you how often it's been viewed, but no expanded details. Now you could imagine the site being broken for a couple of days, a week even, but this has been broken for over a year.).
(Above: Screenshot of the Calgary Herald's idea of a Garage Sale. I wish I were making this up.)
So I pick a neighborhood, Wildwood, North of Bow Trail between 37 St and Sarcee Trail. There's a parade there, over 80 in one neighborhood, it's close, only a single bus away.
The weather, it rains a bit and then clears up. The garage sales, they're there, but there's a dearth of treasures. A couple of Wii games for the girl, a few X-Box 360 games for the boy, and that's pretty much it. By 11:00 in the morning I've walked 5 miles, visited perhaps half the sales and filled only a single small bag.
And then the bus home, time to get ready for work. Not a total bust, but nothing exciting or worth writing about.
On the way home, dozens of other garage sales. This was the big day of the year, and I look sadly at the signs all pointing to the better sales that I missed, the sales where there were vintage Rolexes, 5 for a dollar, vintage jewelry, rare books, antiques, none of which I discovered today.
I need a car. Garage sale season, to all intents and purposes, is pretty much done this year, but next year I'd better have a car.
Package #2
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1697
Predictable, really, that they're all arriving the same week.
This one, from Belgium, small enough to fit in an envelope...I thought I must be mistaken, but, no, it was exactly what was ordered.
What was I thinking?
But small enough that they won't take up a lot of room, already in the printing trays above the bookshelf.
Bloop
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1221
A very loud, low frequency sound detected in the oceans on multiple occasions. It's audio profile supposedly resembles that of a living creature, however due to the intensity, duration and frequency it would have to be much, much larger than any known animals that exist in the ocean.
Further Reading: Wiki on the Bloop.
Tarred & Feathered
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2502
People think, when I suggest that we hang, behead, draw and quarter our politicians and lawyers, that I'm being a little extreme.
I'm not, it's simply that I think when anyone - whether it be a police officer, fireman, Judge or politician, is appointed to public office they have not only the civic duty (like the rest of us) to obey the law, but as well an exemplary duty.
And when, as so often seems to happen, the temptations of a 12 year old girl in a chatroom or hefty bribe prove too much for them to resist, the punishment should be an order of magnitude above and beyond what we'd sentence anyone else to.
The makers and enforcers of the law should be held up to a higher bar than the rest of us. It makes sense.
Yet when I suggest, to those so silly as to solicit my opinion, that we hang, torture, dismember or employ any of a number of other classic and antique methods of public justice to not only punish the miscreants that so abused their position, but to set an example and reinforce public belief that "justice has been served", people think I'm being a little extreme. It's enough that the cop that molested children lost his job, that the politician lost face,....
Of course it's not, and as always we sympathize with the perpetrator and not the victims.
Bringing to mind Brian Mulroney, who's recent role as chief beneficiary in the bribery scandal will never involve jail time or adequate restitution for the money he swindled both from his victim and the citizens of Canada, who so arrogantly sued and won millions of dollars for libel (although he was later proved to have: "broke his own ethics code, engaged in inappropriate behaviour and evaded the truth for years by purposely concealing hefty cash payments"), who has continually cost the taxpayers millions of dollars (and continues to cost us in investigative and settlement fees), where then is the potential for justice here?
There is, of course, none.
But what we could do, should do perhaps, is Tar and Feather them. Only a slightly antique custom, properly North American, we dip them in hot tar, roll them in feathers, and run them out of town. Or in Mulroney's case, out of the country. It gives people at their new destination a "head's up" as to what to expect, it properly expresses our contempt and ridicule, it (small consideration for the liberals) causes no permanent and lasting harm to the victim, sure, a bit of humiliation, but for the million(s) he's cost us I'd happily undergo the ritual...it's something, at least, to get our money's worth. It announces to the world that he's fallen far far short of the already low standards we have for politicians.
This Canada Day lets do something great. Lets tar and feather Brian Mulroney.
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