Tag: Gen X at 40 and its Readers

Xmas Week Free For Al!

Busy morning at the beer blog. Dealing with a sponsor and helping a foreign brewery understand the Ontario marketplace not to mention editing a piece from Knut of Norway.

So, while I slave digitally (note that pun!!!) and especially after yesterday’s debacle, we’ll have a test to see if you can lift yourselves out of the celebrity blether gutter and have an actual civilized discourse of your own design – because I find it very funny that you did this given the third last observation to the right on the page cm linked to.

A Yuletide Friday Chat

Is this the ides of Yule? Hard to tell with mid-December temperatures in the 10C/50F range. 55F in Watertown, NY today. It is slowing down around town – the university emptying out, folks daydreaming of Christmas cake soon to come, people writing Christmas cards instead of clamouring in the streets. By the way, if you get anything from me this time of year it will be late. I seem to be always finding a reason to not open up that pack of cards. So it will be late.

  • Dear Mildred Dover, Attorney General of PEI: try that one again:

    …Speaking to municipal officers, he accused Dover of displaying “underhandedness and sneakiness” in the way she prepared the amendments. “That language is totally inappropriate and unacceptable,” said Dover. “He operates under the Canadian Bar Association’s code of professional conduct. The code says, Mr. Speaker, and I do have it with me, and I quote, “he should take care not to weaken or destroy public confidence in legal institutions by broad irresponsible allegations of corruption or partiality ?.”

    Does the highest…h’mph…law enforcement official in a province really think that the Code requires lawyers to not make unpleasant blunt comment about the acts of a legislature? The rules on legal institutions refers to the courts, the body of which we happy few are officers. We are not officers of the legislature. Further, we are otherwise directed to civility in relation to public authorities which generally includes the direction (at CBA Code, Chap XIII, Rule 3) “the lawyer should not hesitate to speak out against an injustice”. Further (At CBA Code, Chap XVIII, 9):

    The lawyer is often called upon to comment publicly on the effectiveness of existing statutory or legal remedies, on the particular effect of particular cases, or to offer an opinion on causes that have been or are about to be instituted. It is permissible to do this in order to assist the public to understand the legal issues involved.

    We are asked to be particularly careful in our discussion of the courts as we also recognize that they cannot speak back…as opposed to an Attorney-General who can and who is in an opposing and adversarial position to the interests of the lawyer’s client. Remember – this is a politician hitting the big red button in their brain for being called underhanded and sneaky. The inhumanity of it all. Sneaky. And at Christmas, too.

  • Have I mentioned recently…ummm…Matsuzaka! The Red Sox will clearly control the universe next year with the best pitching line-up in the history of all human endevor. All are doomed. I have been wearing my Red Sox t-shirts all week in celebration. In oneness with those who know me not but care for me. That is the miracle of sports fandom. They care. They really care.
  • By comparison, I guess I am not that big of a fan of hockey. Maybe it’s that thing I have about anything called a stick:

    Billed as “the single most important piece of hockey memorabilia in existence,” the world’s oldest hockey is now up for grabs on eBay. As of Thursday morning, 26 bids had sent the price of the coveted piece of Canadiana soaring to $2.2-million (U.S.). Gord Sharpe has owned the hand-carved, one-piece hickory stick since the age of 9. It was given to him by his great-uncle, whose grandfather Alexander Rutherford Sr. fashioned the stick on his farm near Lindsay, Ont. for play on a nearby pond. The stick is believed to have been carved between 1852 and 1856.

  • You people really need to deal with the fact that in winter I sleep in a bit:

    Gary Rith to me: 7:34 am (11 minutes ago)

    c’mon, dammit, POST!

    Alan McLeod to Gary: 7:38 am (7 minutes ago)
    I woke up at 7:22

    Gary Rith to me 7:38 am (7 minutes ago)
    who cares! just got a message from cm and the race is ON!

    Go!

  • I am listening to a discussion of “presenteeism” which is the opposite apparently of “absenteeism”. It means encouraging people to not show up at work when they are sick. The pendulum just started its way back. Next, the virtues of a cluttered desk.
  • Speaking of a trend coming to an end:

    After analyzing thousands of credit and debit card transactions over a two-year period, Mr. Bernoff found that Apple has historically been able to sell only 20 songs on average for each iPod device sold. “If iPod owners continued to purchase music tracks throughout the lifetime of their ownership, one would expect to see iTunes sales growing at a faster rate than iPods,” he concluded in a new report. Years ago when CD players were introduced, consumers rushed out to buy new music libraries. Clearly, the iPod is not having the same effect on content, he said.

    This is the problem with the digital world – no stuff. We are creatures of stuff more than we are of money. If things are not acquirable without payment and come with no stuff, why would there be any economic inertia behind that change? It wouldn’t. The transactional event is hollowed out. Soon people will clamour in the streets for the return of stuff.

    Update: my pal Dan noted another issue with the 2.0 world.

  • How does the governmental administrative process of “giving up” actually occur? Is there a protocol? A guide?

    In a major blow to the Bush administration’s efforts to secure borders, domestic security officials have for now given up on plans to develop a facial or fingerprint recognition system to determine whether a vast majority of foreign visitors leave the country, officials say. Domestic security officials had described the system, known as U.S. Visit, as critical to security and important in efforts to curb illegal immigration. Similarly, one-third of the overall total of illegal immigrants are believed to have overstayed their visas, a Congressional report says.

    Tracking visitors took on particular urgency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it became clear that some of the hijackers had remained in the country after their visas had expired. But in recent days, officials at the Homeland Security Department have conceded that they lack the financing and technology to meet their deadline to have exit-monitoring systems at the 50 busiest land border crossings by next December. A vast majority of foreign visitors enter and exit by land from Mexico and Canada, and the policy shift means that officials will remain unable to track the departures.

    That is nutty. Aside from the security issue, who gets to decide that they have “given up on plans”. Is this some sort of infiltration of libertarians?

Yes, sort of boring this week. But I am late. I am all ready behind. Next week? Last workday before Christmas. No problem. Week after that? I will be a week into a holiday week. Expect big things. Today? M’yyeh, you know.

Hall of Fame Game Announced

Mets!!! I got the news in my Baseball Hall of Fame newsletter by email today. Excellent but this may make for a more difficult ticket to compared to last year. Gary may have to do a service to the good of GX40:

The 2007 Baseball Hall of Fame Game will feature a flashback to the 1969 World Series as the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles will play on Monday, May 21 at historic Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y. The game traces its roots back to 1940, and is the only in-season exhibition game on the Major League Baseball schedule.

Only so many tickets are available, the first goting to those present at Cooperstown on Saturday, February 17. We may have to organize something here…

You will recall that Gary and I went last year.

Christmas Cards 2006

It must be the holidays. I made the julglogg this afternoon (Polish vodka, frozen mixed berries into mason jars for 30 days or so), got ticked over the number of “special events” the kids are already booked up for and remembered to pull out the old “send me an address and I will mail you a card” GX40 post from last year which goes like this:

So because I have finished the Christmas shopping way before the usual afternoon of the 24th, I actually pulled out the address book to do a few cards. Then I realized that the internet has destroyed whatever relationship I ever had with the global system of postal services. The “sent to” address lists ends in 1996 when I send out 12 cards. Good Lord. I could do a performance art piece on the current residents of the former homes of people I could have kept up with better. But that would be sad and this is Yule.

So if you know me and want a card, email me at christmas.card.from.alan@gmail.com. And if you don’t know me – and are not the sort of person Michael does not let come to the party – send me your address anyway. I will see how the cheap drug store cards are holding out. Who knows? Maybe I will stuff every fifth envelope with Canadian Tire Money.

So then I go to check out the email address and see Marian sent emails to it well into January long after I stopped looking at that Inbox. Sorry about that. Keep in mind I am really bad at following up these things but let’s give it a go for 2006.

Speaking Of Campaigns

Speaking of political campaigns, a subject most facinating, what we are witnessing to our south is even more interesting than questions Iggeriffic. Consider this:

As this country’s most outspoken and polarizing social conservative, the two-term Pennsylvania Republican senator has been in Democrats’ cross-hairs for two years. Now they’re moving in for the kill.

Recently when chatting with a northern New Yorker mention was made that this year might well be the end of the thirty years of a particular brand of conservatism that began – people will shake their heads now in disbelief – with the rise of Jimmy Carter in 1976, when the words “born again” entered the political arena with legitimacy for the first time. It has been that long since I would have imagined conservatism as a general thing being able to be described as “on the run” as the quote above does. It has been a long time since the moral majority might not have enough votes. To be fair, these things certainly have natural cycles as no theme captures the public imagination forever, but that is perhaps especially the case after corporate and public scandal, after it becomes apparent that debt financing is all that actually gets trickled down.

But, as in most things, there is a penchant to count one’s chickens before they are hatched. Needless to say I will be a gawking at the TV tube come election night. I’d have another US election pool but Kateland and I began our falling out over the last one, something I could not bear to repeat. But maybe I should. Maybe it is time. The Vote Master, after all, is back.

Help A Blogger Out

Ian asks an interesting question:

I am not out to solicit praise. Someone please tell me how I can do this blog differently, or what they would do with this space. Dialogue is all but dead, and the rest is gossip. If this is merely a place to put photos, I could do it on Flickr. Are blogs really just the domain of knitters and people who are still dating? If we’ve all made up our minds, why are any of us still talking?

Even as stats crash and the false promise of blogging pans out fully, I often think that this blog and others are geared primarily to trigger response. Seeing as that is part of our CIA funding agreement, it makes sense. So respond – if you have any requests for topics and themes, let me know. Should there be a Tantrama City reunion mini-series? Should I finally make up my mind and join a political party? Should I just stay home and cut out all this travelling?

At least go tell Ian what to do.

There Is A Club For Everything

Some days you just don’t know what to write. There is nothing decent to steal off of other bloggers, the news is the same or worse and its a rainy cold evening that feels so much like the fall that it could be Newfoundland in July. Then think of the seach you have never searched before in 15 years of surfing and there it is – you’ve come across the Vintage Snowmobile Club of America and your faith in mankind is restored.

I don’t know why I think this is neato…

1974 Mercury Sno Twister for sale (Serial Number 16 of 1000). It is in pieces, but I can assure you everything is there. I recently bought a NOS track, MANY NOS engine parts (Gaskets, seals, rings, a jug, and good condition used heads for it). The seat, hood, and bellypan are there, and in ok shape. There is much more so ask questions if you would like. Make Offer

…but I think it speaks to the same need to determine what Shakespeare looked like or what the big bang was really like. These are variations on a theme and the theme is developing idle pointless skills and knowledge. I’m not even handy at all and have no shed but the idea of buying something on the basis of “I can assure you everything is there” is intriguing to me.

I have a pal who has said that if I see a boat for a hundred dollars I am to buy it. I think he has about seven now. Because he has told everyone that. We all have it. We all want to sit in a shed in a slightly smelly old armchair that is actually quite comfortable if you know just where to park yourself as the sun comes through the door nicely and, besides, you know where the rum is. Its called young old crazy guy syndrome. We all have it but these guys really have it – the Old Lawnmower Club on England. Look upon their knowledge and gaze in wonder. I even caught myself thinking that lawn mowing history is actually a little interesting – and wondering who would want a nine-inch wide mower? – but now knowing that “Shanks Britisher” is not only the last words of gratitude a Nazi escapee would have uttered to his collaborator pal as he rowed out to the U-boat on that moonless night.

They Blog!

Who knew? Dynamic and an honest name, too: Plenty of Nothing. A stark, disconcerting absence of baseball related yappetry to date, though someone is reading Koppett.

Entirely Unrelated Update: This is today’s task.

Not Entirely Unrelated To The Entirely Unrelated Update Update: It is a 1957 Eagle NHL “Pro” Official Hockey game. But toy acquisition policy #357 says non-slot-hockey rod-hockey is to be decorative given the familiarity and expectations resulting from the 1960s slot-hockey rod-hockey break-through. Be prepared to admit your weakness if you follow this link.

Friday Chatting As Cats Glare

So I figured if I was qualified to act as judge and executioner over the life of a
cat I was at least qualified to be amateur boy vet. Seems likely from what
you read on the internet that the old thing is anxious from the move, creating
alkaline pee and over eating. I’ve been doing that too so I am not slightly
sympathetic. Away with the all-night cat food buffet and in with the locking
them up with slightly acidified water. We’ll see. I know there are alkalined cat
lovers out there so I will not be grim or overly Nero-like with these decisions.
See you keep me on a moral path.

  • Update: The Flea writes good.

  • Gary wants you to know that he has a
    myspace blog     now. I do not know if this is wise of him as there is a heck of
    a lot of flotsom and jetsom around the MySpace world but Gary will let us know.
    I would tell you but as a joke I set mine up in German just to see and now I get
    emails from teens in Leipzig whom I have no interest in having as mein
    Freunden    .

  • On a fancy-grade whim, I bought one of these
    which I saw on deep discount. It is, as far as I can tell, is a junior
    gin-soaked popinjay training kit and pairs with the subterranian stash
    nicely. Suggestions for accessories welcome. I already have housed the pair of
    Greenock golf club whisky tumblers so you can rest easy on that account.

  • It appears that talking
    with terrorists     is in fact what one does after all. Of course, we knew this
    and did not buy into the pre-post-post-9/11 thinking that conveniently forgets
    the IRA, ETA, the MPLA and every other acronymed militant insurgent radical
    political movement in human history. As these people are people in the
    neighbourhood and not cyborgs in a robot army,
    settlement and reconciliation at the end of the day is the only end game.

  • I am concerned for the lack of respect that imaginary mystic
    dwarves     are getting these days.

So it is the end of another week
and another week’s worth of bullet points. I hope to be off to the Antique Boat Regatta
at some point on t’other side of the bridge as I wants to hear wee boats go
VVRRROOOOOOOOOOOM but it all depends on the weather.