We're voting for what ? A reader's digest version of political double-talk and babble.

Canadians go to the polls on Monday to elect a new government. Based on what I've read and heard over the last 5 weeks of campaigning it would seem that the Conservative Party is on track to once again be the majority party but this time with an NDP (New Democrat Party) led opposition. So sorry Steven, no majority for you and sorry Iggy, not PM title for you. Instead, it'll be smilin' Jack Layton of the NDP who gets to scream & yell on our collective behalf at the Conservatives.

Now a few things pop into my mind as the date approaches. Specifically, if 1 in 3 Canadians is anti-Harper, how in the hell can he still be our PM. I understand the electoral logic "blah blah blah" but come on. He was our minority PM for the last 5 years and he's IMHO dragged Canada downhill yet somehow he's going to get his old job back ? I understand that there's a lot of people who would argue that he's in fact done great things for our country but hey, this is my blog and they're all friggin' idiots.

Harper seems to have absolutely no respect for the urbanites of our country, has no respect for anyone east of Alberta, has no respect for the rule of our Supreme Court, has no respect for our democratic institutions like ohhh....Parliment and he obviously has no respect for the opposition's right to oppose, ask questions and expect answers. Yet somehow Stephen Harper, the dark overlord of the Sith is likely to get to keep his job. His corrupt and secretive cabal of insiders (I'm looking at you Senate and Cabinet) are going to get to keep their jobs and the tax breaks for the wealthy & corporations will continue while the rest of Canada adjusts their diets to water, gruel and cans of tuna.

Not to mention Harper's insistence that he's done absolutely nothing wrong by our country. Alienating our colleagues in the UN where we've NEVER been denied a rotating seat on the Security Council until HE came along. This pompous, arrogant, rich mamma's boy gladly spent $1 Billion dollars on a weekend party with his global cronies, had arrested anyone who complained about it, denied that the money was mis-spent on things like $2 Million dollar ponds and $250k gazebos and then when asked to account for where the money was spent and what benefits we Canadians would reap, told us all to basically suck it.

I think it's clear that I'm not a fan of our esteemed Conservative Leader. The sad thing is that I could spout some venom about his opponents as well.

Ignatief is a whiny academic who has the charisma of a turd and is behaving like the proverbial whiny little brat who's being denied the toy he really, really wants but he promises he'll be good from now on and if only we could all see the fact that he really is meant to be PM because, well.....just cause. I mean don't we know by now that the Liberal Party did great things back when moses was a babe and Ignatief is the ONLY one who can make it all better ? To hear him talk, every other party is crap, he's the only one who speaks for Canada and we should all just give him the job cause he's...well...he's not the other guy ?

Layton, well, Jack's an ok kinda guy but....He want's to be everybody's pal. Got an itch ? Jack'll scratch it for ya. Got a social cause that needs funding ? Jack'll fund it. Lofty aspirations and if we had the money, I'd be all for Jack's giving us all what we wanted but problem is, Jack can't seem to add. If we were to try actually paying for half the shit that Jack's promising then we'd make the current Greek economic crisis look like lollapalooza. Jack, I'd love to live in your socialist, everything's for free, open arms and kumbaya singing utopia but where's the money coming from ? Cap & Trade isn't even in place and yet Jack seems to think that it'll fund everything he's promising including getting grandma's dentures plated in gold, but c'mon Jack, you're moving up to the big league, time to stop playing with crayons & look at the numbers a bit more realistically.

So in the end, as a Canadian I'm left with 3 choices on May 2.
1. Darth Vader and the corporate oligarchy he wants to put in place. The man who would sell your sould to the corporations cause hey, they promise to create jobs (and fund his retirement)
2. The whiny "it's mine, it's mine, it's mine....waaaaa" sniveling academic who's only argument is that he's not the other guy
3. The smiling used car salesman who means well and is only asking to borrow your credit card to pay for it all

Some choice. I wonder if it's too late to throw my hat in the ring ?

Donald Trump for President ?!? Ummmm.....

Real estate mogul Donald Trump may, or may not run for president. But Thursday in Las Vegas, he was sure sounding like a someone who's ready to jump into the race with both feet. He did it with enough explicitives to call it a Rated R speech.
Once while discussing Iraq.
"We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road they blow them up, we build again, in the meantime we can't get a f***ing school in Brooklyn," Trump says.
To the audiences approval, while talking oil.
"We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you're not going to raise that f****ing price," he says.
And finally, while speaking about taxing Chinese goods.
"Listen you mother f***ers we're going to tax you 25 percent," Trump says.

You've watched the royal wedding, so now what?

-- Blatantly Ripped Off from the Toronto Star Online, April 29th, 2011 --

By Cathal Kelly
Columnist
LONDON—The royal wedding’s over. Now you have a terrible decision to make – am I seriously going to work?


No. No, you’re not.


After lurching from your bed in the middle of the night and drinking champagne for the next four hours, you’re too emotional to work.


For instance, halfway through the ceremony you turned to wife, took her tiny hand in yours, and said, “Justin Bieber’s what, eighteen? Why doesn’t he get married so that we can have a national holiday, too?”


Then you cried. Again. And she got busy sanding your deck furniture.


Maybe it was the champagne. But whatever it was, you’re in no shape to operate an overhead crane.


You’ve been looking forward to this day ever since you first saw Kate and William on their coming-out-as-a-couple Swiss ski-holiday in 2004. At the time, you thought it was a re-run of Ski Patrol, but it really affected you.


For the next seven years, you put aside everything else – your friends, your floundering cake business, all that Canadian Tire money that went moldy in a shoebox – so that you could see this through.


Now it’s gone and you’re grieving.


Spend the rest of the day getting over your royal wedding hangover, or, as you described it to your supervisor, “a really huge tapeworm.”


8 a.m. – It took you weeks to make your special royal wedding day crown from crazy glue, thumbtacks, glitter sticks and sheet metal. You even wore it to bed last night. The bleeding has stopped, but there’s tetanus to worry about. Go down to the Open Clinic. Maybe while you’re there, they can help you with your Camilla obsession. A sort of two-for-one.


9 a.m. – If you want to get over something, start by burying all traces of it in the deep well of your soul. That’s what Dad always said. Start removing the Union Jack bunting you’ve wallpapered your front porch with. Decide too late that lighting it on fire is a bad way to expedite things. Now maybe your Australian, Indian and Irish co-workers will end their boycott of poker night.


10 a.m. – You find yourself wondering what Kate’s doing right now. Probably talking to the Queen. Something about new sheriffs and being in town.


11 a.m. – Actual, rather than metaphorical, hangover begins.


12 p.m. – Turns out your wife skipped work, too. But she was hiding from you in the shed. Promise you’ll stop calling her ‘Kate’ and asking her to wear that dress. The two of you sit down to a lovely lunch. Then you ask where the recipe for crumpets is and you get ‘that look’ instead of an answer. Fine. Cold cuts it is. But warn her that these were the cold cuts you bought for your special ‘Six weeks until the Royal Wedding’ brunch, so you never know.


1 p.m. – To relieve tension, you tell that funny story about Harry again. No, no, the funny one; not the deeply offensive one. Too late.


2 p.m. – Is it too early to watch the PVR’d recording of the royal wedding? Once again, you get ‘the look’. Retreat to shed to watch highlights on cellphone. Dry your happy tears with old sock soaked in turpentine. Back to the clinic.


3 p.m. – After a gentle suggestion from your wife, you put your entire collection of royal memorabilia up for sale on eBay. Good thing you didn’t tell her about the storage locker.


4 p.m. – Coronation Street is on. Be strong.


5 p.m. – Aversion therapy – you start thinking republican thoughts. That makes you think of Donald Trump, and you get the giggles, and eventually, hiccups.


6 p.m. – Your wife wants to have a serious talk about your behaviour lately. Remind her that you have a tapeworm, and whatever you say is actually the worm talking.


7 p.m. – In conciliatory gesture, tell your wife you want to get married again in Westminster Abbey. You’re not reassured when she wonders who you’re marrying this time.


8 p.m. – The sun is setting on the most perfect wedding day of your life. Okay, second. After Diana’s.


9 p.m. – Time for bed. You need to rest up for the Queen’s Jubilee.

The Great Feast - Awesome !!

In late summer the plankton bloom is at its height. Vast shoals of herring gather to feed on it, diving birds round the fish up into a bait ball to feed and then................. OMFG !!

Royal Weddings. Dynasty ain't got nuthin' on these folks !!

Just in time for the next installation of your favorite soap opera, we here at the lunatic asylum bring you this informative graphic as a primer for tomorrow's nuptials. Enjoy the festivities, clutch yer hankies and blah blah blah.

Mmmmm...Beer (but it ain't cheap)

If you’re serious about home brewing and you want to do it with style and ease, the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery might be perfect, assuming you care enough about your beer to spend $4,500.


Look here. http://www.williamswarn.com/

According to the RIAA, we should blame Napster & the Web for everything.

Seems the enlightened folks over at the RIAA (the dark overlord of idiot self interested industry groups) has found a direct correlation between everything in the world that's going to hell and the internet, Napster and well, you....the lazy, net connected social miscreant.

Taken without permission from TechDirt but all credit and material is their's I'm just doing what us net-ziens do, blatantly ripping off someone else and giving them credit
__________________________________________________________________________________

The RIAA has stepped up its game in the final stages of its lawsuit against Limewire, where the focus is on determining damages. As part of this, it has cranked out an illuminating chart showing that the decline of the music business rests entirely on file sharing. Nowhere among the multi-colored lines will you find any references to an aging record-buying demographic, the proliferation of thousands of independent labels or even the ultimate game-changer itself, the internet.

As you well know, the internet was invented in 1991 by billionaire tycoon, Al Gore. In its infancy, the internet was nothing more than a forum for conspiracy theorists to exchange anti-government writings and ASCII porn. However, everything changed in 1998 with the simultaneous debut of Napster and the mp3, both invented by Shawn Fanning. With this new "distribution system," the music industry could no longer afford to ignore the looming force of the internet, at least not for more than the next half-decade. Now, with billions at stake, the RIAA has unleashed its ultimate weapon: the line chart. Below is their devastating 

Exhibit A: filed in the lawsuit against Limewire:

Broken down bizarrely into "Albums per Capita," the RIAA's chart takes care to point out two things:

1. Napster.

2. All else being equal, record sales will grow indefinitely.

But that's not all. The number crunchers over at the RIAA have also entered the following charts as eye-catching evidence of the havoc wreaked by file sharing. 

Exhibit B: Napster vs. Kerosene Sales

Kerosene usage dropped off considerably before the 1990's, but was still growing slowly for most of the decade. As this previously unpublished RIAA chart clearly shows, 1999 (1 P.N.*) was kerosene's peak, which was then followed by a decade-long slide. Consulting economists from George Mason University have stated that Napster's arrival "didn't have a goddamn thing to do with kerosene's decline." This testimony has been stricken from the record as "irrelevant," as no economist consulted was a former employee of the major labels. Conclusion: the world would be a better (if slightly more odorous) place if Napster had never existed.

*Post-Napster

Exhibit C: The Internet vs. Vehicle Theft

With this chart, obviously the RIAA intends to show a clear correlation between the internet's introduction and the decline of vehicular theft, an unfortunate situation that has put many honest car thieves out of work. It is also hoping to prove the old adage that "illegal downloading is exactly like stealing a car -- which is why car theft declined as file sharing increased."

As the data shows, vehicle theft followed the music industry's decade-long climb from 1986-1996. Or tried to, anyway. Vehicle theft peaked in 1991 at an unsustainable level of .0066 vehicles stolen per capita. Unfortunately, the web turned these hard-working car thieves into lazy music thieves, thwarting a vehicular theft pattern that should have risen to epidemic levels over the next decade. The data points to one damning fact: you can do more financial damage with a single internet connection than has been done in the entirety of human history up to 1998.

Exhibit D: The RIAA and the Honest American Farmer

As everyone knows, Real Americans Don't Share™. And nothing is more American than farming, one of the first victims of the internet's cruel efficiency. The American farm has been on a decline since well before records were kept (ca. 1992, apparently), and the arrival of file sharing decimated both of the U.S.A.'s prime cash crops: compact discs and popcorn.

The fate of these declining industries are apparently forever intertwined, much like the essentially meaningless overlaid chart above. Both lines run downhill in an indictment of, well, everything un-American. In fact, if you look closely enough, you can see the two graph points bravely embracing each other as they weather the onslaught of progress.

And there you have it: incontrovertible proof that copyright infringement is killing American institutions one download at a time.

Mac or PC - Where do you fit in ?

Break out the chain mail and shields. 300 has nothing on this !!

The Royal Wedding - If Only They Had the Balls........

Experience Human Flight

Maximize the Screen for the best visuals.

This is enough to make me wanna try it.....


Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

BlackBerry Sucks Ass & Rogers taught it how...

Well, it's official. BlackBerry Sucks Ass. I'm not going to sugar coat it. You can put lipstick all over this pig but it still sucks ass. Let me explain.....

I was a content (not ecstatic) iPhone 3GS owner before being bumped into the BlackBerry world. Not by choice but by bad hardware and by Rogers.com who are the dark overlord of Canadian Tel-Coms. My touch-screen developed a region where it would accept NO input. None, Nada, zilch.

So this meant that for all intents & purposes, I now had a semi-functioning iPhone. I could answer calls, play music and take photos/video but actually entering text would be next to impossible with a few rows of the keyboard being dead. Well this was unacceptable since the mobile is my only phone and I did need to actually make a few calls, respond to a few emails and enter some text from time to time.

When this occurred my warranty had expired 2 weeks previously and even though I've been a longtime customer, they basically offered me a replacement at full price which is unacceptable (see an earlier rant of mine about Rogers.com the Dark Overlord). Well, that left me with an option to go on a waiting list for an iPhone 3GS at full price ($300+) or get a BlackBerry now. Guess what I did, since I needed a phone NOW cause it's my only phone ? Yep, I got a brand spanking new BOLD 9780.

Now I'd had a BB once before when I was living in NYC and it was a great handset if only a bit bulky. It certainly worked fine and at the time, was without peer for connectivity. It gave me email, let me txt, let me surf the web (albeit poorly) and have phone conversations. I was expecting a similar experience with this new handset which was supposed to be one of their top of the line models. HA !!

This new BB lets me check my Gmail account alright, but only via POP and not IMAP. So all that folder goodness that Gmail provides me, well that's toast. I've gotta rely on a third party app for that.

The provided RIM applications look like something that was designed by some myopic, dyslexic and perversely inept first year Waterloo Comp-Sci student after a bender of vodka and RedBull.

• The Calendar has decent functionality but I keep getting duplicates and am convinced that my meetings are being rescheduled every time I sync with the BlackBerry Desktop Manager.
• The built-in clock app allows for only one alarm. Now I know that I only need one to wake up in the morning but for anything more than that one recurring alarm, I've gotta go into my calendar and effectively create a new recurring event. Couldn't they just have added that functionality to the clock itself and not make me enter alarms two different ways ?
• The browser is...well...compared to the iPhone, this is a joke. First off, unless you have the eyesight of a freakin' eagle, you can't see shit. Second, it's slower than molasses. Third, I can add bookmarks but I can't get them organized into folders, or alphabetically ? BAH !!
• The Documents To Go that comes bundled with the Blackberry might as well have FUCK YOU written all over it for all the good it does ya. I mean you wanna open a new doc ? Buy the full version cause the once that comes with the handset it read only (unless you wanna play around with sending yourself blank docs as templates). Do me a favor RIM, if you're gonna include something, make it something that actually works.
• Desktop Manager. This is the crowning turd on top of the whole simmering stew crap that is RIM software. I am on a MacBook Pro. The Desktop Manager specifically for the Mac is next to useless. In fact I am convinced that it is there to try my patience and hog my HD space...Period. This thing took (no exaggeration) 45 minutes to install a 245KB file and reboot the handset. All the while telling me not to unplug the handset. What the hell was it doing ? I mean I'm an intelligent man and have been using computers since the days that Pentium 75MHz was king and this is crazy stoopid. WTF were they thinking ?

Ahhhhh....I could go on about this piece of shit but I've spewed enough bile for now.

Notice I said nothing about the hardware. Now that is the only place where this device shines. The screen's too small but considering the perfect size of the handset overall, it's livable. Other than that, I love the actual handset. It feels good in my hand, is compact but usable, has a real keyboard (though my sausage fingers do occasionally hit the wrong letters).

I wonder if we could get Apple to write the software for RIM's hardware. Now that would be a step in the right direction.

More Space related stuff..

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

To boldly go.....Where we aren't going anymore

It's coming up on the 50th anniversary of Mankind's first venture into space. People will think of the Apollo missions as being the pinacle but let's not forget the man who was the true pioneer.

April 12, 1961. For 108 minutes this man, Yuri Gagarin,  was our Magellan. Forget where he came from and the circumstances that propelled him aloft, he was a pioneer and deserves a nod.

When in doubt, go for funny

When Harry Met Sally 2 with Billy Crystal AND Helen Mirren from Billy Crystal

Today's Video Roundups

First up, in celebration of Pixar Studio's 25th Anniversary



And second, for those of you athletically inclined. Try this as your next hobby

Duke Nukem - Rocks the Ladies & brings hope to geeks

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Example of EU Zone governing.

The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility.


As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short).


In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy.


Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.


There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced by "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter.


In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.


Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.


By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by " v".


During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.


Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst place....

Something to think about when watching CNN or FOX re; Japan

Why Rogers Sucks Ass

Ok, I'm typing this on my new Blackberry Bold 9780. Now this was not my first choice of smartphone but it's the one that I'm living with.

Ya see, I had a working iPhone 3GS that stopped working 2 weeks after the warranty ends. I'd hoped that as a long term customer they'd overlook that and gimmie a new one but NOOooo.

Ok, could they repair mine? NOOooo. Ok, could I get an early upgrade? NOOooo. They wanted me to pay full price for a new handset. Not even the cheaper price for new customers but the FULL price. So $399 for another 3GS when some guy off the street gets off with paying $49.99.

Ok I thought, what about a simple plain phone then. NOOooo. That's an upgrade and I'd be changing my plan so there's fees involved in that too.

So much for customer service.....Until I asked to break my contract because afterall, my cell is my only phone, I need one NOW and I'm sure Bell or Telus would welcome we with a good rate. Know what happened? I got offered a Blackberry 9780, for $50 (iPhones on back order).

Then I read that Rogers has to gauge it's customers because it's loosing business. Go figure..... Rogers sux ass but then again they all do.

I am so utterly torn with this one.

I don't know whether to love this or hate it. You be the judge