
Dressed to [not be] Killed

Serving up Hugh since 1994.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
This is also good bye word. WordPress world that is. I am gonna move this to Grav! Why? Why not?
Ouch I have returned with my proverbial coding tail between my legs. Grav is a BFG programmer’s dream. It is an alien painful excursion into everything we hate about WordPress. I will keep plugging along, but Grav is nearly impossible to get up and running quickly due to a vertical learning curve and 10 steps backwards into one of the 1990s rings of web coding hell.
The social mediaverse is aghast and abuzz over a local zoo keeper who cursed at his monkey slave for not doing his bidding. While showing the world how adept a monkey is in it’s natural environment (riding a bicycle) tempers flared. See the video here.
I spent a few years posting on Facebook. Unfortunately Facebook has chosen to not play well with others. The final straw for me was when the “entity” chose to repeatedly post that I was supporting a particular political candidate in our last civic election.This caused me some personal grief, and wtf (what the Facebook??!?!) . I think doing this sort of unsolicited advertising is bad enough for commercial entities, could it not be dangerous for some people when you do it with political parties. Presentably I am still on the FB, but I am only posting to help improv comedy events at The Staircase.
Lac-Mégantic is Harper’s Walkerton. The horror of the tragedy in that small town is beyond description. I remember the similar anger and helplessness felt 13 years ago as people were dying in Walkerton Ontario. The parallels are staggering. Same collection of bullies in power. Same “deregulatory common sense foo foo.” Same fluff about how humans somehow run a private company better than humans run a government organization.
Eventually these lies catch up with them. The spin of their media trolls at CFRB, CHML, and SUN could not hide the deaths in Walkerton. Nor can they hide the deaths in Lac-Mégantic. Mr. Harper referred to the devastation as “unbelievable.” It is not unbelievable. It is predictable when no one is watching the decay of the tracks. It is predictable when leaving one man to watch an 50 car train has become common sense. It is predictable when dinosaur owners like Edward Burkhardt are considered captains of industry. Regardless of all the approaching committees, punditry, blamestorming, and crocodile tears Canadians will remember Lac-Mégantic like Ontarians remember Walkerton.
There are no proper words of consolation for people that have lost a dozen loved ones at the same time. But there is action. The burning train sits firmly at the feet of Mr. Harper and the choices that put safety in the caboose behind profit. Shame.
Walkerton http://tinyw.in/Q5uT
State of Railway http://tinyw.in/Jpu1
Burkhardt http://tinyw.in/TiDS
This is the most accessible election in Canadian history. Please get involved. Vote Early. Vote Often. Elections Ontario
When I went to my friend’s wedding in Metcalfe Ontario (near Ottawa) I was not expecting to see a picture of Dr. Strangelove in the reception hall.
Several months ago Host Co. of the Pan Am Games gave the Hamilton Tiger Cats $100 million to build a new stadium provided Hamilton kicked in another $50 million. The Pan Am $100 million was supposed to go towards a Pan Am Athletics Stadium. This deal was brokered by the newly minted Mayor Bratina. There will be no athletics in the Ti Cats Stadium. The monies supplied by Hamilton helped drain its Future Fund. A private entertainment complex does not meet any of the Future Fund’s criteria. It was hard to understand how a both sources of cash for the Ti Cat stadium came from sources that should not to go towards such a project. A few months later, without consulting the elected council, Mayor Bratina announced that Hamilton will pursue all day GO Service instead of LRT, and disbanded the LRT workgroup. This allowed our Premiere to state the following:
“That was the No. 1 ask of the city,” McGuinty said. “We’ve had some important conversations with the mayor, and this is their priority. Which made it our priority. Over time, we can enter into other discussions about things like the LRT.” Link
So now instead of fulfilling a $1000 million promise of paying Hamilton’s rapid transit bill, Hamilton will instead get $7 million in funding for GO Train service. It gave the provincial government an easy out from a billion dollar promise to Hamilton. Metrolinx recommended the Hamilton LRT, earmarked $850 million for it, and is presently shovel in ground for $9500 million in rapid transit development in Toronto.
Would a mayor actually betray his own city so completely just to get his beloved Tiger Cats a stadium? I don’t know but he used to work for the Tiger Cats. I still don’t know, but he is publicly endorsing the provincial candidates who’s butts he saved…. Link