Wow! I was just cleaning out my fridge and decided that the litre of milk that I’d been saving (to make sour-milk pancakes) since I bought it at Christmas should probably be thrown out.
As I poured it down the sink, I noticed that it wasn’t even curdled yet, so decided to taste it – and it wasn’t even sour!
What kind of milk – or any food product – last for that length of time? This stuff must be pure chemicals, or treated to the point where it couldn’t possible have any nutritional value left.
The following was written in response to a relative’s sending me the following link:
http://www.globecampus.ca/blogs/parents-view/
Oh, Lordy! Don’t get me started!
From the time when the children were in elementary school, and I’d send the school handouts back to the principal with the spelling, punctuation and grammar corrected, to the working world in an office, trying to make sure that letters to clients and diary entries on the work log are at least comprehensible, never mind professional – it has been a losing battle.
If our educators (those that make the policies) had thought that literacy was important, it would have been taught. They didn’t, it wasn’t – and now we’re left with a population where most under 50 think that the way they communicate on e-mail or cell phone text is the height of communicative skill.
And for anyone who reads a brief look at newspapers or recently published books will tell you that even the supposed “editors” are illiterate. Reading has started to aggravate me so much that I’m turning vigilante and reading with a red pen in hand to correct errors so that the next reader isn’t encouraged to think that the mistakes I find are the correct way to do things. I also started clipping mistakes from the local papers and sending them to the editors, but found that that endeavour could take most of the day, many days, so I gave up. And that was over a decade ago, and it’s only gotten worse.
Language vigilantes – Arise! Unite!
That thing young people wear on their heads is called a dew-rag, NOT a do-rag.
And it’s NOT a ‘black thing’, it’s a farm thing – as is wearing your hat backwards.
I get so fed up with seeing the language butchered by folks who don’t seem to know anything about what they’re talking about.
I’m a (white) grandmother, and my grandmother wore a dew-rag, and that’s what she called it, as did all the women who worked on farms, or even did their own housecleaning, back in the day.
My grandmother explained to me that it was called a dew-rag, because women in those days weren’t allowed to do anything as vulgar as sweat – instead they “got all dewy”. And the rag was there to ’soak up the dew on their brows’.
And this whole thing with wearing your hat backwards – give me a break! Farms, plantations, road gangs – all those guys wore their hats backwards. Well, after billed caps were invented, and provided they were lucky enough to have a hat at all. The purpose was to protect their necks from the sun while they were bent over working. The boss wore his brim forward to shade his eyes so he could keep an eye on the workers.
I would see it as being more constructive to emulate something a bit more forward looking.
Neither of these clothing choices was invented by the current young generation, and both look back to a hard past – a time that is still being lived out in many countries. Just because we have been fortunate enough to leave much of that behind doesn’t seem to be a good reason to trivialize those customs.
And then there is the fad of wearing jail-house attire. Shoes flopping off the feet, great baggy clothes. Why are we allowing our youth (and Heaven forfend!, sometimes copying them) to glorify the criminal class, and then in the next breath whining about the crime rate? We can’t have it both ways – but that’s a whole other story, too . . .
I’ve just been alerted (by a Cuban-American friend) that Cuba has prematurely shut down the petroleum agreement they had with Canada.
Pebercan had prospected for the petroleum and signed an agreement with the Cuban government for shared development rights, from 1993 – 2018. It was announced Friday in the Cuban business media and Reuters picked it up, that the Cubans have trashed the agreement. My friend says the Cubans have made a new deal with the Russians. What, they couldn’t wait until this deal ran its course?
I’ve got to say, I’m really ticked. I’d say anyone who vacations in Cuba after this is just telling the Cuban government that it doesn’t matter how Canada is treated, or whether they are honest in their dealings with us.
Was your cheap vacation partially funded by this act of dishonesty? Think about it . . . . and pass this on. (If new developments somehow vindicate the Cubans in this, I’ll be sure to pass on that information too.)
Gathering Herbs in Cuba
Yeah, me and Bonnie.
Is anyone else tired of the “flawed” leading men in the TV drama series? Those Oh-so-noble losers. Where are our heroes? The guys with the white hats?
I am so abysmally tired of trying to find some nice escapist entertainment, and being continually presented with “heroes” that booze, sleep around, avoid commitment, cut ethical corners and then whine about it all. And they’re everywhere! There isn’t a ‘leading man’ in any of the series I’ve seen lately that I would categorize as a decent human being.
If I wanted to spend my time watching gutless wonders get their tails caught in the door time after time, I would have trained as a psychiatrist.
And I guess when it gets right down to it, I’m not particularly interested in the personal life of any character in a TV drama. If I’m watching a cop show, I like to see the action, the procedures and the process. I could care less about who they’re sleeping with – or anything else that is peripheral to what the show is supposed to be about.
And don’t even get me started on “reality” television! Doesn’t anyone have a life of their own anymore? Do we so lack in initiative and imagination that we’re reduced to passively watching what passes for other people’s lives? I’ve tried watching some of it, but the small-minded, petty, mean-spirited content turns my stomach after only a few minutes.
If it wasn’t for PBS, TVO, Discovery and a few channels like that, I would have put the TV in storage long ago. John Prine maybe had a point.
I’m just really glad I have a library card!
Hoo-boy, am I ever having fun with this!
It started out from necessity, having my ears a bit plugged, so in order to catch the dialogue on the TV and not disturb the neighbours, I turned on the captioning option. I’ve left it on just for fun, though some days it’s more a strain not to bang your head than it is a giggle.
If you ever want to see what kind of impoverished vocabularies people who have gone through our dumbed-down reading and English classes have got, then this is the way to do it. Some of the mistakes are simply hilarious, as on one of Sir David Attenborough’s bird shows, where he was talking about a budgerigar, and it came up on the captioning as bugery guard.
Sometimes the captioning is so bad, that I wonder how those who rely on it solely have any clue as to what is really going on! I’m not talking about the odd – or even more – typo, as I know if I had to keep up my keyboarding to the speeds some of those folks talk, it might look a lot like Hungarian. But things like on the newscasts, countries’ and people’s names spelled so wrongly that if you didn’t already know what they were talking about, you’d never guess at all from what was written.
For those of you who need some cheap thrills and astonishments, turn on your captioning. It can really be a hoot!!
Just heard that the recently publicised report on Tazer use by the RCMP was highly critical, both of their usage and of the safety of the implement itself. And that was with 16 pages removed from the report that they wouldn’t make public.
It’s about time! I have written before about the seemingly indiscriminate use of Tazers by our police forces. Last year 22 people died after being tazed, and from what can be seen on the news reports, most of them weren’t doing anything that a translator, a doctor, or a bit of time wouldn’t have solved. There was no need for what they have been calling ‘non-lethal’ force. And as we can see, that force is clearly anything but non-lethal.
Now never let it be said that I’m unsympathetic to the job our police forces do. They daily face stresses and dangers that the rest of us can only imagine. BUT what seems to be in short supply in their training is a bit of common sense – or else a strong directive from on high that just because they have a new toy is no reason to use it for everything, everywhere.
I could say a lot more about the seeming inability of the adrenaline junkies on all the forces to remain rational during a rush, but that will be a topic for another day.
Keep well.
Here is a copy of an e-mail I sent to Orvis, after receiving their new clothing catalogue and scanning a few pages:
Please take me off your mailing list.
I will never buy clothng from a company who is ignorant of both proper style names and fabric names. That would just be asking for trouble.
If you can’t take the care to name your garments properly, what expectation would I have that you would make them properly?
Mock neck sweaters and fine line corduroy just don’t cut it, either in proper names or proper English.
If I had a “mock neck” my head would fall off, for Pete’s sake!
You know what I mean?? I’m fed up with ignorance that is becoming so widespread, I don’t know how we manage to communicate at all some days!
This is a copy of an e-mail I wrote to some US friends, who had asked me what I was thinking about their candidates. I don’t follow US politics too much, but try to get some sense of those that are running come election time – mainly so I’ll have something else to be nervous about I think<G>
“I don’t really know enough to have to much of an opinion. I have so much to do to keep up with the scoundrels up here.
You know, even though I am not a fan of the present government, I really hope there isn’t an election this fall. I’ve gotten so dismayed by all of the major parties’ platforms and performance, that I’m just cynical enough to think that this minority government situation is a good thing.
They complain that they can’t get anything accomplished with a minority government, but given what any of them want to accomplish, I’d say that’s just fine.
Not a constructive attitude, I know, since there certainly are things that need doing. And electoral apathy in Canada is just huge now, and has been increasingly so for some decades. People don’t trust the government, or have any faith that those folks on The Hill are there to do what’s best for the country as opposed to what’s best for their friends or their own pockets. Public service has degenerated into self-service.
The only light I see at the end of this tunnel is the Green Party. They are, as far as I know, the only political party other than the Communist brands to be present in multiple countries. Elizabeth May, the Canadian leader, has extensive political experience. And they are the only party that seems to have a sound economic policy combined with an innovative environmental policy.
They are not NDP Light, as so many people seem to think. I had always liked that the NDP’s hearts were in the right place, but somehow, their economic policies not only left much to be desired, but also left whatever level and place they took the helm in bad shape financially. But all of the governments seem to do that now.
What’s really bugging me these days, and even since before the last federal election, is the refusal of the ruling committee to allow the Greens to participate in the formal debates. They set up a law that says that a party has to get 10% of the popular vote in an election, and then they can take part. That’s fine – you can’t have a debate with innumerable people who represent nothing that more than themselves or one or two others are interested in or agree with. That happened with the Green Party two elections ago, and they’re still refusing to let them take part. This is unconscionable – and illegal, by their own rules. What’s up with this?
And you know, while I’m at it, I really have to address the concept of vote splitting. That’s what it’s called when folks try and convince you not to vote your conscience when you’re in favour of a small party, since the votes taken by those voting that way may allow the worst of the big, bad guys to gain power by taking votes from the lesser bad guy.
I’d like to point out two things about that. The first is that until people start voting their conscience and giving the smaller parties growing clout – and it will grow, since they’ll get more press, and more ‘followers’ will feel comfortable voting that way too – nothing is going to change. The big bad parties will feel increasingly smug about the lack of opposition to their flawed leadership (and that word’s a joke in this context!) and will continue to do as they please without reference to either the good of the country, the world or the people. But the most important thing, in the long run, is that voting your conscience makes a statement that will be heard increasingly throughout your network and others will begin, I hope, to see that there is a chance to change things if only we’ll stand up and be counted. Someone has to start, and if it means that for this time the wrong party gets elected, well then at least eventually there’ll be a chance for the right party to get elected. If no-one starts, it’ll never happen, so I might as well be one of those who starts – and maybe you, too.
With only about 30% of the population voting, it’s too easy for governments in all first world countries to discount the voter entirely, and govern only for the benefit of their own small cadre and to let malfeasance, dishonest and unethical behaviour slip by with only a “tsk, tsk, you shouldn’t have let yourself get caught”. And we’re seeing more and more of that. Members of government working hand-in-hand with big business, passing laws that are unfavourable to the general population, but get them cushy jobs with salaries that would support a small third-world nation when they decide to retire from government.
When I hear stories from new Canadian friends about those who are fighting and dieing in their home countries for the right to vote and have some say in government, I wonder when, how, and why we here let it get so far away from us. This is supposed to be a participatory democracy – so for Pete’s sake, participate!!
There’s a saying that you get the government you deserve, but what’s sad is that the small percentage that are working to try and better the condition of all have to sit and suffer through the governments that the majority have deserved for their lack of caring.
I know that when you take “The Government” as a whole, it’s enormously overwhelming, and it’s easy to think that you can’t do anything to change things. But you can!! If everyone did just one small thing to help their party, or even to educate themselves about one or two of the major issues and figure out which party really represented their thought on those issues and could be trusted to follow through, it would make a remarkable difference. And that difference would grow exponentially over time to influence some large changes. And if we let our elected representatives know that we are watching them, and their performance, and expect them to be working towards our best interests, that too, would make a huge difference.
Let’s pull up our socks, Canada! Get involved! It’s your life.
