Uh oh, he's talking politics!

In light of the fact that we are currently immersed in Politicking from all sides, I feel the urge to express my views.

Firstly, I feel that I am a typical Canadian voter; I am apolitical. Not what you expected from me, was it?

That doesn't mean I'm apathetic, it just means I'm not a card carrying member of an organized party.

There are no signs on my lawn, nor will there be. It's nobody's business whom I support.

I don't consider myself red or blue or green or chartreuse or whatever other politico stripes you can be.

As Joe Average, I have a few basic expectations from the people selected to run my Country.

When I go to bed at night, I wish to sleep knowing that while I dream impossible dreams, the status quo is maintained. Maybe even improved a little.

Not much to ask.

I do not want to wake up to skyrocketing gas prices.

I do not want to wake up to a devalued dollar, either by design or by chance.

I do not want to wake up to double digit inflation.

I do not want to wake up to interest rate hikes.

I do not want to wake up to higher taxes. Or new taxes. Or taxes disguised as tariffs.

I do not want to wake up to find my tax dollars going to bail out another multi-national corporation.

I do not want my elected officials to waste time fighting amongst themselves and calling each other names, they should have gotten that out of their systems in grade 7.

I want my politicians to tell me what they are going to do for me, not what the other guys are going to do to me.

I want real time health care. Why should we have to wait interminably long times for tests and procedures that we have already paid for with tax dollars? And why should hospitals need to have bake-sales for equipment?

I want the Native Land claims issue sorted out. Would you want to own property within The Haldimand Tract right now? I do. And although my tax assessment doesn't reflect it, I'm pretty sure that the Native Protest Camp 600 meters out my back door has had a negative impact on my property value.

I want real support for our Armed Forces. They need ships and choppers and tanks and weapons NOW. The Governor General can wait a few more years for a bathroom remodel. Tell her to cross her legs.

I want rights and power taken away from the criminals and given back to the police.

I don't want you to promise the me sky, because I know you can't deliver it.

I just want the real time day to day crud to go a little easier.

If you can promise me all or most of the above, you'll get my vote.

DJW

How do protesters decide which sites to target?

I have a question for the HDI and its friends: How do you select which sites to protest?
You have delayed development at several large commercial, industrial and residential sites, but Tim Hortons and Boston Pizza, both within sight of the river, go on unfettered.
Is there a dollar threshold you apply?
Or do you support coffee and pizza?
Just curious.

DJW

This just in....

Listen...for all of you who think I make this stuff up, this is reprinted (read stolen) verbatim from Yahoo News.

Lewd, crude vandal leaves his greasy imprint on Nebraska town

By Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press

VALENTINE, Neb. - Boy, how people here wish their busiest vandal would find another way to make his mark.

Beginning more than a year ago, some man has been skipping from one business to another at night, pressing his naked behind - sometimes his groin, sometimes both - on windows.

Store owners, church workers and school janitors have had to wash lotion and petroleum jelly off the windows he selects.

Police Chief Ben McBride says it's the weirdest case he's ever seen.

Some residents of Valentine, a town of about 2,650 people, find some humour in the strange vandalism and have taken to calling the perpetrator the "Butt Bandit."

But they also can't help but cringe when finding his marks.

"We were completely grossed out," said Kalli Kieborz, who works in a downtown building. "One day I walked into the office and an employee said, 'Oh, my God, we've been struck!"'

The police chief is far from amused.

"It's not funny," McBride said. "We're worried about the next step."

It started in spring 2007, when the window of a Methodist church was greased with an imprint. McBride figured it was a high school prank. But the church kept getting hit, even after police staked it out.

The bandit struck business after business, window after window last summer.

Then he - and maybe, McBride said, copycat vandals - stopped over the fall and winter.

"People said he was done," McBride said. "Then he started back up this summer."

During one particularly brazen session, virtually all the windows at a local hotel were imprinted.

McBride said no one has reported seeing the vandal in action. The only clue is a blurry picture of him caught by a surveillance camera at the middle school last year.

The man was six feet tall or slightly taller, and slender. He had a dark complexion, and McBride said the man's dark hair was styled in a "1980s, feathered look."

Valentine, in remote north-central Nebraska, promotes itself as "The Heart City." Downtown sidewalks are painted with hearts, and locals encourage people from around the country to send their Valentine's Day cards to the local post office so they can be mailed out with the word "Valentine" stamped on them.

"This is not normal behaviour for Valentine," Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott said. "It's not funny or something people want to be exposed to."

DJ here...

Now what gets me is not the fact that this guy is doing this, and that the local paper is reporting this, but the national news wires have picked this up!

Now, I've never been to Valentine, Nebraska , but a map of the town would indicate it compares in size to Ayr or Acton, Ontario.

So it would seem to me that if they merely posted an image of one of the 'tags', at least one female in the town should be able to I.D. the offending parts.

My guess is that its the local druggist, otherwise a red flag would go up by the purchase of a lot of Vaseline.

Horatio Caine, Nebraska needs you!

I leave you with a comment from a Yahoo reader:

Valentine"s vasoline vandal has a limited window of opportunity before being exposed and will have to bare time behind bars.

POSTED BY: Flin Flon Man on SAT, SEP 13, 2008 12:35 AM -0500

DJW

Some driving advice.

The Q.E.W. is one of the busiest highways in North America.

Every once in a while I drive that way to work to remind myself why I don't drive that way to work.

Some observations and advice from my most recent trip:

• YOU in the Beemer: HANG UP AND DRIVE!
• YOU in the Honda: This is not Formula 1 and you are NOT Micheal Shumacher.
• YOU in the Acura: The on/off ramps are not your personal passing lanes.
  
• YOU in the Buick in the left lane: either pass the guy on your right or get behind him. Geeze dude, you're holding up everyone behind you.
• YOU in the Audi: Flash me one more time and you'll get a face full of my spotlight. If the Buick would pass I would too. This isn't the Autobahn, Gunther.
• YOU in the SUV: BACK OFF! Your headlights are the same height as my back window and your blinding me!
• YOU in the Gravel Truck: Your following that Smart Car too close, and your brake lights are too dirty to see.
• YOU in the Semi: That is not a Honda your piloting, Skeeter! Pick a lane!
• YOU in Olds: The limit is 100, not eighty. If you can't get it up to speed, get off.
• YOU in the overloaded construction pick-up: Get a second truck or a trailer. Idiot.
• EVERYONE: Leave enough space and we wouldn't have those daily chain reaction rear enders that slow down every other decent driver.

There, I feel better now.

See you on Highway 5.

DJW

A day at the beach, a night by the fire.

The "Out of Office" message on my e-mail reads, "Life's a beach, and thats where I am."



If summer only lasted one day (and for the last few years that's what it seems), I would spend that single day at the beach.

We did just that this week.

In days of yore we would call friends, throw a cooler and some towels in the car and go.

Now it seems that we have to plan this as an annual event and arrange around everyone. One of our friends Facebook'd to her kids to get a turnout.

As we don't get much time to do stuff like this anymore, we tend to go overboard.

Now it's an event. And we like it that way.

Yesterday we were first on the beach (as usual) and staked our claim, secured our territory and set up camp. We had enough food for the a school football team, shade shelter, music and the Bag-o-Fun!

And the beach was marvelous. Warm without heat or humidity, breeze, sand and surf.


Kelsy the puppy sprang from the car to the water spent more time in the water than anyone else. Gleefully bouncing after the ball and romping over the waves. (see video below)


My Darling Bride didn't get sunburned, and Thing Two did, but no interesting pattern this time. Thing one made her huge sand castle and walked for hours.

There were people dumped out of the dingy, and my kite flew this year! In fact, it almost beat the Wright Brothers record!

Dinner rocked. Not just my homemade burgers, My Darling Bride prepared half a grocery cart of fresh fruit and veggies, there was a cooler full of cold drinks, and Jane and Rob roasted a beef on the beach. We don't do things half way, you know.

The remnants of the BBQ were used to start the campfire, a necessity to roast hot dogs and make smores.

The light show was two-fold, the 63 million stars you can see from there (we counted them) and the glowstick theater put on by David.

Friends, sun, sand surf and a campfire.

In the end, we left the beach as we found it, empty.

Till next year.

Um, what month is it, anyway?

It's August by my calendar.

I've used 2 vacation days since May. (and you thought civil servants had it easy) One of those was because my car broke down on the way to work.

I'm off next week and I am going to the beach. Its what you do in August.

I went to buy some beach toys tonight, they are fun to have at the beach in August.

I wanted some buckets and shovels so I could make sand castles at the beach in August.

I went to Buck-o-Rama and Dollar or Two to get stuff to play on the beach in August.

I found Hall-o-ween costumes and decorations.

A note to retailers...

...ITS FRIGGIN' AUGUST FOLKS.

On a more positive note...

...I'll be the only one with Dracula fangs and a fake axe in my head on the beach in August.

DJW

L. Ron Hoover , where are you?

Frank Zappa fans know who L. Ron Hoover and the Church of Appliantology are.
The rest of you, don't worry about it.

What this is really about is appliances, and the brats they can be. (right up there with cars, dogs and offspring)

You've all read the saga of our water heater. Some may argue that it is a fixture, not an appliance. Po-TAY-toes, po-TAH-toes

Like most couples, when we started out, a new appliance was one that was new to us.

Our first washer /dryer combo was an Inglis Liberator set the same age as My Darling Bride. The Westinghouse upright freezer was from the 50's and we only got it because the previous tenants couldn't afford the crane to move it. These units worked like a charm right up to the day we replaced them with brand, shiny new toys.

We went through a series of $75 fridges and stoves (Almond or Harvest Green, usually)
Our toaster oven is a monster, big enough to rotisserie a whole duck or 2 chickens, and I bought that at a yard sale in 1989. The dishwasher was a hand me down from an in-law, a portable that we made a built in.

Our first brand new appliance was a microwave oven, given as a wedding present.

BBQ's are indeed an appliance, (a necessity if you have a Y chromosome), but ours were all hand-me-downs as our friends and family got new ones.

Now, a sidebar. We are bad savers. The only way we get ahead is by forced savings via payroll, and we end up with a nice tax refund every spring.

After more than 10 years of using the tax refunds to catch up on bills and complete renovations, we started an appliance replacement program in 2002. The ancient washer/dryer was first to go, and brand new full size stacking front loading automatic washer and dryer took over the job of 2 loads a day.

What a miracle! It took less than a day now to do laundry!

An added bonus: our water and electricity bills dropped immediately.

At the same time, the 11 year old microwave that kept blowing fuses was replaced with a bold, black and stainless 1.2 cu ft 1200 watt bad boy.

The following year, it was the Big 3: fridge, freezer and stove.

Black. All black. Black hole black. Sucks-the-light-out-of-the-streetlights-black.
Black doors, black bodies, black handles black knobs, black glass top, black range hood.

You get the idea.

Last spring, in a vestige of male-ness, I replaced the tiny almost Hibachi sized BBQ with a ginormous stainless steel, cast iron grill, 2 gazillion BTU BBQ. It even has hubcaps! I could use it as a back up forge if needed.

All top name brands, top of the line and with warranties.

We shouldn't have to worry about them for as many years as the old ones, right?

Not long after the water heater adventure, the microwave popped whilst popping popcorn.
6 years old. Just a baby.

In a busy house like ours, it is a necessity, so we trundled off to Wally-mart, as we were also low on cash. It was smaller than we had, but a brand name (rhymes with Royal Canadian Artillery), and had a two year warranty.

Around the same time, water started leaking out of the bottom of the fridge. I first suspected the door seal, which did not pass the paper test for tightness, and I replaced it.
Just over 5 years and 2 months old.
$65 for parts. Turns out the overflow tube was also blocked. I cleaned that out myself.

Later that same week...

...while a pot roast was cooking, the oven started making a morse code of beeping noises and quit. Not only did it quit, but the door lock came on and our dinner was trapped!
Our oven ate our dinner!
We managed to free it from the beast after cutting and restoring the power, but it was a close call. The error code it was flashing on its digital display indicated 2 possibilities. The least expensive of which was $200 for parts.

Again, just over 5 years and 2 months old.

Two weeks ago, the microwave again. THREE FRIKKEN MONTHS OLD!

Last week, the handle broke off my BBQ.

Sigh.

Why can't we build appliances to last 40+ years anymore?

I know.

If they lasted that long, you won't have to buy them as frequently. Kind of a job security program I guess.

Except that I won't replace the offending units with the same brand.

BTW, the $15 mammoth toaster oven still works fine.

...and it looks just like a Telefunken U47!

DJW