My Geography

Sliding across barren land
A dessert, deep and red
Dust, heat, fear

Hear volcanoes erupt in the distance
The earthquakes below
Shudder, crack, fear

Instability surrounds
Rushing through the panic
Earth, alone, fear

Great pillars of rock
Land breaking away
Tremor, scream, fear

Waiting for the aftershock
The erosion of sand
Wind, life, fear

-C.S.

Too Organized

The Girl's Washroom at work has a official system for the identification of stalls that have run out of toilet paper. (This is because apparently looking before you lock the door and sit down is too complicated for the public service.) Each of the three stalls has a magnetic clip on it. Hanging from this clip is a thin strip of paper. (Yes, of course, this is laminated and includes the liberal use of ClipArt.) On one side it says 'This Stall Is Out Of Toilet Paper' and the other is blank. After you use the last of the toilet paper in a stall you are to go out and flip the laminated sign over and clip it with the writing facing out. In the morning someone must flip them all back to show the blank side, or maybe the evening cleaning crew does it when they refill the toilet paper. Mind you this was not designed or initiated by the cleaning crew, just an overzealous administrative assistant. (There was a memo sent out over e-mail to everyone detailing the system and how it worked when it was first implemented a few weeks back.) The entire thing is just so insanely ridiculous I can't stand it.

Squishy

"I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy. Come on, Squishy Come on, little Squishy ... Ow. Bad Squishy, bad Squishy." -- Dora (about a jellyfish) in Finding Nemo

Stuck At The Crossroads

I have writers block. I haven't been able to think of something to post here for a while. What is crazy is how much stuff is going on in my life, yet I still can't figure out what to write. I'm leaving my job, going back to school, good friends are going away, other good friends are returning soon, my brother has headed off to start military training, my parents are close to retirement and selling the house I grew up in. Everything is happening around me, but I can't grab onto any of it to make sense of it all, or to help feel grounded in anyway. I'm just so tired and the words really are not flowing.

Charlie's Angels

Bovine Economics

World Economic Models Explained With Cows
(E-mail Forward, Author Unknown)

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and gives you some milk.
FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows.
None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reports the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the shit out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of Democracy....

Just in Time

Little Brother Mike left today to go to New Brunswick for 7 months. At the end of last year he started to think that the Brantford factory life might not be for him and his band wasn't really on the fast track to fame. He looked into the Canadian Military and did the smart thing of joining the Reserves first to see if he liked it. Throughout this year, he has been working and training with the Reserves and has really enjoyed it. It took a long time to get through the paperwork to switch into the Regular Force. He received notice a few weeks back and everything has pulled together rather quickly and is going to be in Gage Town, NB for the rest of the year. Turns out because he has done his Basic Military Training and Soldier Qualifying Training in the Reserves he is skipping ahead. He is going to be bumming around the base for a bit before starting Military Occupation training for Combat Engineering which takes just over 5 months, starting sometime in September. He flew out there this morning, luckily I got a hold of him on the phone right before he boarded the plane to say, "Goodbye, Good Luck, and I love you." My Dad drove him to the airport and my Mom was going to say goodbye in person before he left. I asked if she was going to cry and she said she didn't know. I don't know either. We have lived far enough away from each other for so long that I'm used to not seeing him. He is also hard to keep in contact with in the best of times anyway, so I doubt I will notice much difference. Also he still has a ways to go in training before he departs for any tours, so there isn't a huge threat to his safety at the moment. I haven't really figured out how I feel about it all. It seems to be happening so fast and I haven't wrapped my head around it. No matter what though, I'm very proud of him.

Painfully True

"I will not wear high heels. Because heels are a male invention designed to make women's butts look smaller... and to make it harder for them to runaway."
-She's The Man by Ewan Leslie