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November 26, 2009

Girl Power

This morning over breakfast, my youngest daughter (who is now 7) asked if I thought that boys were tougher than girls. I paused before answering, wondering where this was going...

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"I'm not sure. What do you think?" was my coy reply.

"Well Kyle in my class says that boys are tougher than girls," she said, looking up from her cereal.

"Is that true?"

"I think I could fight Kyle and win. I'm sure that I could just go up to him and kick him, and he would probably start crying, and then I would win the fight."

"Oh?"

"Yes. But if he tried to kick me - "

At this point she leaps off of her chair, and proceeds to mimic a boy delivering a kick. I stifle my laughter and just nod.

" - then I would just grab his leg like this... (she demonstrates) ...and turn it and then push him to the ground and sit on him. Then I would win the fight again."

"I see. So girls are tougher than boys?"

"No, " she reflects, "some girls aren't tough. And some boys aren't either. So I guess it depends. Some times girls are tougher, and some times boys are tougher."

"Sure, that sounds fair."

And with a serious look on her face, she delivers the final blow: "But I could fight Kyle and win."

Posted by Hammer at 03:50 PM | Comments (1)

November 12, 2009

Just Clean Jokes

While scouring the internet for jokes that are suitable for my nine year old daughter, I'm disappointed with how many lame joke web sites there are. I'm just looking for a web site full of good clean jokes, she's not interested in ten thousand one-liner knock knock jokes.

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I give my daughter more credit than that. Her joke comprehension is far more advanced than most adults around her assume it to be.

She is also astute in creating her own jokes. She loves telling jokes to her friends in grade 4. Last week she came up to me and said, "I've come up with a new joke. Do you want to hear it?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"Why did the frog say he was hungry?"

At this point I'm wracking my brain, trying to find some connection between hunger and frogs. Ribbit? Croak? Tadpole? Jumping? I eventually gave up and answered, "I don't know, why?"

"Because he was hungry!" exclaimed my daughter with a huge grin on her face.

I groaned and then laughed, because her punch line was so unexpected, and so well-delivered.

Go check out Just Clean Jokes for more jokes.

Posted by Hammer at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2009

Little Brother

I must have been living under a rock, because although I had read the name "Cory Doctorow" online a few times in the past, I really didn't know who he was or what he was about, until I stumbled upon his book "Little Brother"....

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It was earlier this year, on a normal week night around 10:00 pm. Somehow I got directed over to the CrapHound.com web site, and quite randomly chose to click over to Little Brother. I started reading, got sucked in, and didn't stop until I was done. I read the whole thing in a few hours, finishing up around 3:00 am.

The publishing of this book was interesting to me: the whole thing could be read online for free. I wondered how Cory expected to ever make any money from it. But after reading Little Brother online, now I know I'm going to purchase a physical copy of it, just so I can share it. I know that I could e-mail my friends a link to the book online, and I have, but many of them just won't read a book online. In the past I've freely given away my books to friends, with no expectation that they return them to me. Life is just too short, I don't think I'm ever going to re-read most books.

The subject of the book, the material that really drew me in, was just how easy it was for "the state" to harass and eventually imprison anyone for essentially doing nothing wrong. I've felt this in real life for years now. I've seen real life cases of police and government really messing up the lives of innocent people. Maher Arar and David Milgaard easily come to mind, I'm sure that there are hundreds more.

If you choose to read it, I hope that you get as much out of Cory Doctorow's book as I did.

Posted by Hammer at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2009

Canada's National Debt - We're Digging a Deeper Hole

I'm overly fascinated with Canada's National Debt, even though I feel quite powerless to affect it in any way. So I'm relegated to analysis and commentary. At least I have something to keep me entertained.

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I went over to the Department of Finance's web site and looked for two things:
- the budget that the federal Conservatives laid out for 2009-2010
- the year-to-date actual numbers for revenues and expenses

If I weren't determined I don't know that I would find these things. Again I tried to follow some old links that I had bookmarked, and again the URLs have changed and the links were broken. I'm getting more convinced this is on purpose. Anyway, here is what I found. First, they budgeted for an increase of program expenses of $13 Billion compared to last fiscal year:

(Click to enlarge)
Source: Budget 2009 Fiscal Outlook

But actual program expenses for the first 5 months of fiscal year alone (April 2009 - August 2009) have already gone up $14.1 Billion compared to this period last year:

(Click to enlarge)
Source: The Fiscal Monitor (edited)

That's the first half of the equation. Now on to revenues. First, here is what the government projected for revenue in this fiscal year - a very small decrease of only $0.3 Billion compared to last fiscal year:

(Click to enlarge)
Source: Budget 2009 Fiscal Outlook (edited)

However, the actual numbers to date for revenue show a real loss of $10.6 Billion.

(Click to enlarge)
Source: The Fiscal Monitor (edited)

The fact that federal government revenues are down and expenses are up won't come as a surprise to most Canadians because they understand two simple concepts:
(1) as people lose their jobs, they stop paying income tax; and
(2) as people lose their jobs, they start collecting employment insurance
So the government loses revenue at the same time as they incur more expenses every time someone in Canada loses their job (and is eligible for EI).

The unknown here, and at time of budgeting months ago, is exactly how many people in Canada would be moving from "employed" to "unemployed" in 2009. I don't expect the Minister of Finance or any of his crew to have known this exactly. But they should have at least a good guess, a guess that is in the ballpark and reasonable to use for budgeting purposes. They are being paid to have better guesses than you or me (they call it analysis, I know, but it's little more than educated guessing as you can see).

Let's summarize this all in a table:

From the table above, it looks to me that by the end of this fiscal year we will be adding around $59 Billion to the federal debt, not the $13.3 Billion that the government told us we would be adding. Ouch. This is fiscally irresponsible. I'm not saying that we should be trying to pay down our debt during this recession, but I was truthfully hoping for a balanced budget. I always hope for at least a balanced budget, but it looks like I'm going to continue to be disappointed for the next few years, perhaps the next decade.

The audited financial statements for last fiscal year have finally been published, and without going into them in full detail here, it turns out that the federal Conservatives also did a bad job of budgeting last year. No surprise there.

If I were in charge of the federal budget I would certainly do things differently, but then I'd probably also not last long in government. Perhaps we need a new reality TV show where people get voted off the island for making decisions that keep them elected but that are bad for the country.

Posted by Hammer at 06:45 PM | Comments (1)

November 04, 2009

You're In My Heart (and Down My Pants)

By the summer of 1992, I had been a mobile Disc Jockey for five years, and had already played music for more weddings than most people will ever go to in their lifetime. This particular night, I was on the road, playing music for a small town wedding...

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The town was Duck Lake, with a population of about 500 people. If you've ever been to a small town wedding, you know that they are wildly popular affairs, with what seems like the whole town being invited. We were in the Duck Lake hall (probably the only place one could hold a wedding there) and it was packed. This was a true small town wedding: it had an open bar, which usually leads to a wild party in itself.

I had another DJ, Carlos, along with me for training. He sat in the background most of the time because this was his very first dance, but we did talk about things like music selection and crowd participation. This was back in the era of cassette tapes, so there was still a lot of work to do in cueing the music and switching tapes. Eventually as the dance went by I even had Carlos fade music from one deck to another and switch tapes.

The dance was like many other wedding dances, with the notable exception of crowd excitement... these people were truly having fun, and it really wasn't a lot of work to get them up and dancing. The dance floor was packed all night long. What a great time, and by the end of the night they simply weren't ready to end it. So, they didn't. An uncle of the bride came up to me at 1:00 am, handed me $100 cash, and said "keep playing!!" So I did!

Those days, $100 bought another hour of music. The music kept going, the bar stayed open, and everyone continued to dance their faces off until 2:00 am. Once again I announced that the music was about to end, and once again someone came up to the stage with money. This time the father of the groom handed me another $100. The crowd was still going strong - I didn't think anyone had actually left at that point. Incredible.

At 3:00 am I thought for sure they should be ready to wind things down. Once again I announced the potential end of the music. Now normally when people are having fun and they hear a DJ tell them the music is about to end, especially after two hours of overtime already having been played, there is a collective groan from disappointed party people all across the hall. That didn't happen. Instead, as if on cue, people reached into their wallets and purses, and started looking around like they wanted somewhere to deposit their money. I was confused, until I saw someone walking around the dance floor holding a cowboy boot. The boot was filled with cash, and then promptly brought up and presented to me. There was another $130 in the boot! I told them that they just bought another hour of music (my rate was going up), and the party continued on. Including the bar - again, much to my amazement. But this was a small town, and I figured the mayor and/or police from the town were likely just as drunk as the rest of them and had no intention of shutting things down. Plus the bride and groom were still out dancing, which does help keep everyone else in the partying mood, since they're the feature couple of the night.

Carlos was starting to complain that he had to get up early the next day. I laughed and said, "well I guess you're getting a feel for what this work can be like. You still want to be a DJ?"

The music was going strong, the bar was open, and they set out another banquet table of food because people were starting to get hungry again. I grabbed a plate of food and kept on playing. I was having just as much fun as the people on the dance floor, plus I was getting paid very well. What a great night!!

At 4:00 am when I announced yet again the potential end to the music, I was fully prepared to have more money thrust at me, but it looked like the party goers might finally be ready to call it a night. A great many people came up to shake my hand and tell me just what an excellent time they had that night. The parents of the bride and groom, aunts and uncles, even grandparents were coming up commending me on the variety of music that kept everyone dancing.

I cued up what was to finally be the last song of the night. The REAL last song of the night. As the first few guitar chords of Rod Stewart's "You're In My Heart" started to play, I noticed one very drunk bride wandering over. I assumed that she just wanted to thank me for a job well done. No, she had other designs. "What would my wedding dance be without a dance from my very favorite DJ?" I wasn't sure how to answer that one. She grabbed my hand and dragged me out onto the dance floor, which at this point was still VERY packed. I wondered if alcohol alone was truly enough to keep this many people awake and dancing at 4:00 am, or if they had somehow spiked the food with stimulants. As I was gazing in awe at the crowd around me, the bride moved in very close for a slow dance.

I felt a little awkward, but decided to loosen up a bit - this was her wedding, she was having fun, may as not spoil it by acting all weird. As the song went on into the main chorus and it seemed like everyone was singing along, she pulled me even closer and started to say something. I couldn't hear her since everyone was belting out the song in true drunken group karaoke style, so I also leaned in to listen. At that point as we were practically pressed up against each other, I felt something down the front of my pants. I quickly realised this was her hand, feeling me up. Oh shit. I had no desire to get severely beaten by the groom or any number of his groomsmen, so I tried to distance myself but that didn't work too well. If I didn't get out of there rather quickly, there was about to be some very firm evidence presenting itself from the front of my pants.

I looked around and noticed that the father of the bride wasn't too far away, and thankfully he wasn't dancing with anyone. I yelled to get his attention at the same time as I wrestled myself away from the bride, and motioned for him to come over and dance. He took the cue, started dancing with his daughter, and I thanked the bride for the dance and quickly slipped away.

I'm sure that to this day the bride from that particular wedding dance has no memory of this incident ever happening, and truthfully that's best for everyone. But every time I hear the first few chords of "You're In My Heart", my mind goes back to that small town wedding dance and me being felt up by the bride.

Posted by Hammer at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)