Hey There (Number Twenty-Something for the "I-Know-I've-Been-Offline-Awhile" File)

Mme and I had a little mini-break last weekend in Banff, the place where everyone is from somewhere else. In one day I was served and had money taken by eight Aussie women. So if you're sitting around in Bundaberg and wondering where all the good Aussi women have got to, you need to visit Banff. If you're a Canadian, sitting around Banff or Whistler and wondering why all the local girls have funny accents, may I suggest Byron Bay? Okay, so half the women in Byron are Dutch, but you're still more likely to encounter a fellow Canuckistani.

Well a lot's been happening in the world, but little of it seemed to require a post:

We were all supposed to $#17 ourselves over swine flu, but it really doesn't seem as bad as all that. The World Health Organization was right to crank up the pandemic alerts, because there was a genuine risk. But I feel that fast precautions may have averted the worst of it. Besides, in the end it's a 'flu. It poses a major risk to those with immune disorders, and to the elderly and the very young. Like all flu do. Wash your hands, quit snogging strangers at the pub, and you're less likely to be exposed.

A friend of mine, Big Jim, posted a link to healthnet or whatever that friggin' colloidal-silver-flogging network is. Just as last time, it's all a big conspiracy by "the six companies that own all media" and their partners, the pharmaceutical industry. Among the claims: Canada is a corporation, because something named "Canada" is apparently registered with the SEC. Media film at the time showed machinery "producing vaccines", and colloidal silver was shortly to be banned (for at least the third time).

When I tore the post apart, he deleted my post, claiming my discussion was "irrelevant". So I asked directly for the names of the six companies. He refused to name them, saying I should Google them--That is, I should go to a mega-corp to investigate the megacorps that have such a lockdown on media that nothing contrary ever gets published except by people who believe the New World Order and the Reptillians are about to overwhelm us any minute now ... Aaaany minute now ... It's coming ... Don't say we didn't warn you ...

Then he closed his post by saying "This is just my opinion. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know."

I could shoe the Kentucky Derby with the irony in that statement. I have as yet refused to go back and re-post my original and see whether it gets deleted again. I mean, he's a friend. Crack-brained and paranoid, but a friend nonetheless.

Meanwhile, the Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry into whether ex-Prime Minister was taking money from an arms dealer has yet to conclude what most of the country already knows: Mulroney was a Conservative (despite Stephen Harper's desperate and lowlife attempts to have his name stricken from the roll) and a profiteering crook. But I repeat myself.

My general feeling is that when you're meeting in a hotel room and trading envelopes stuffed with cash, someone's getting ₤µ©λed. And since neither of the principals in this case is worth that much, it was the taxpayer. Unfortunately justice in this case has ground on so long, and ground so fine, that there really isn't anything left. I just hope we get a verdict and a prosecution, and at least see both men in jail, before one of them cacks out.

Iran released journo Roxana Saberi, thus catching a slight ethical edge on Barack Obama, who's unfortunately handling the abundant evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the Bush administration the way a cat handles a cat-turd on a linoleum floor. Bad enough he's refused to prosecute the torturers and their enablers. Worse that he's not even pumping for a truth-and-reconcilliation commission. But worst, he's failed to repudiate the current regime of domestic espionage.

Still, he isn't Bush, or any other Republican. And that counts for a lot. Especially while the mainstream of the Republican party is echoing Rush Windbag's sentiments that he hopes the country goes down the crapper because it'll apparently prove that Democratic presidents aren't fit to run the show.

The momentous dishonesty of a tubby, rich, white, stogie-puffing pervert and "ex-"drug-addict making such a statement whilst standing amid the rubble of "No Child Left Educated", a tanking economy fuelled in part by tax cuts to fat, rich, white dudes, two failed invasions, and a legacy unequaled since Rome fell, seems to have escaped Mr. Limpbough.

The Pope is touring the Middle East. Yeah. Whatever. Interestingly, the main manufactured outrage over the tour seems to be over the fact that he's a former Hitler Youth member. On this one, I'm with the Vatican. It has ₤µ©λ-all to do with his current positions. First off, many people were HY members in the final days of the war. A trucker buddy of mine's dad was "recruited" to serve on the barricades in Berlin when he was fourteen or so (and recruited at gunpoint into the French Foreign Legion shortly thereafter--I'll tell you the story sometime). And secondly it isn't as though he's touring Israel denying the Holocaust. Finally, for a wonder, his handlers seem to have managed to keep him from making any stupid gaffes like "Condoms raise the AIDS rate" thus far.

The latest shuttle mission is trying to sort out the Hubble space telescope again. This is annoying. Here's why: NASA has a project slated for 2012 or so, it's supposed to create a telescope array--several telescopes all flying around a specified distance from each other--with a baseline around 10,000 miles. We've just discovered several nearby stars with what look to be Earth-like planets in them. With a telescope with a baseline of ten thousand miles, if there's any intelligent life out there, we'd be able to read the license plates on their saucers with that kind of power. I want this to happen soonest. It may be the closest to real space exploration we manage to get to in my lifetime.

Because if we keep re-electing the bozos we're getting, we may need to find some new real estate, soonish.