Michael Jackson's alive and well and living in Fiji
"Maybe 2 + 2 = 6" he begins ..." But I wouldn't be surprised if Michael Jackson wasn't alive and well living in Fiji. The pressure, it just got to him.....He's there, living with Clint Eastwood and Barbra Streisand....."
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George Orwell - Keep the Aspidistra Flying
An uncomfortable recognition of the resemblences between young Gordon Comstock and myself; unfortunately I haven't gone searching for poverty (but it's done a fine job of finding me....). As always, Orwell has a fine eye for the minutae and details of the hypocrisies and manners of English society. And the bit about advertising is as relevent now as always...but still, that damnable resemblance....
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- Category: Books
The Neighbors, the cat and the realtor
The past few days have been fraught with minor annoyances. The house is being sold, I can stay here until it's sold and then have to negotiate a new deal with the new landlord. The realtor has been about, showing the house, he calls and gives 3 or 4 hours notice to announce he's got a showing, then calls back later in the afternoon to announce another. "Enough is Enough" I say, I want to be helpful, I have the best landlord in the world, but I'll be damned if I'm going to arrange to be out of the house for 18 hours a day while he leads through tour groups....I explain it to him, he's apologetic, I suspect he's new to this and so try to be a bit understanding but really now....
And then there's the neighbors. They showed up on Monday, the whole posse, friends, relatives, I was alerted by the startled cat who ran into the house to hide. They're moving out. They tried the city, didn't like it, they're going to move back to the reserve. Judging by the hickies on his neck there's been some sort of reconciliation. It took them 4 hours but then they were done and gone.
I give them the utilities bill, roughly calculate the gas, they promise to pay, send me a cheque by the weekend, it's almost a thousand dollars and so I hope, but I know my priorities aren't their priorities...
They want the cat. I offer to buy it off of them, "No, we can't sell our cat", no mention of the fact that they were happy starving it, leaving it for 3 weeks without food or water locked in the cellar hall, they want their cat. It wouldn't be a family without the cat.
The cat is of a different mind. It's cautious as they're moving, won't go outside, hiding in the living room. Finally when they've finished packing they come for it, I offer to but it one more time but they wouldn't consider it, it's their cat, and he calls and beckons it while it hides in my room, reluctantly I pick it up and hand it to him. It's not so excited.
Carrying it to the truck the cat claws him and escapes. They look for it for about half an hour, wherever it's hiding it's not coming out, finally he approaches me and says that apparently the cat wants to stay with me.....and they leave.
I find the cat in the alley, my new roomate, have to find a name for her but I think I have one already, "Cat" I'll call it.
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Front Page News
There was so much they could have done with this....
Front page news in the Calgary Herald. The headline something like "Gorilla with knife scares visitors to Calgary Zoo", or the like.
What it should have been was "Proof of Evolution" or "The Missing Link Discovered" or "Gorilla takes hostage, threatens euthenasia if demands not met...", "Gorilla prepares for Calgary Stampede" or a hundred other far more entertaining possibilities.
A shame the photographer sold the rights to the Herald.
The real story was much more mundane, a zookeeper had forgotten his knife in the enclosure, curious gorilla picks it up, aghast visitor snaps photo. What was remarkable was the comments posted on the site, hundreds of irate Calgarians demanding that the zoo be closed, cleverly observing the obvious fact that the zoo is inhumane, ignoring the obvious contradiction that our bloated lifestyles have stolen from the Gorillas the last of their habitat, if not for the zoo then they soon may well not exist at all....
Funny how people look at things.
And then the case of poor the woman crushed by the falling cement slab in Montreal, initial headline "Woman crushed by cement slab in Montreal", then, as the story updates (Woman was sitting on outdoor patio at cafe celebrating birthday with her husband, slab falls from builing and crushes her) the headline is changed to "Woman asked to sit there...", a morality tale for demanding customers, implicit is the fact that by requesting this seat she was somehow responsible for her misfortune, the classic case of a demanding customer somehow getting her just desserts...
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- Category: Rants
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