Doc Watson - RIP

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Make a little noise

I don't think this is about tuition hikes anymore.


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Back on the air

As you can hear (automatically, if you don't want to hear, just go to your right and hit the pause button) Radio Woodshed is back on the air after a long hiatus. We will be broadcasting pretty much 24/7 with cleverly compiled playlists and occasional forays into live DJing (I'll even take requests via twitter). I know the sound quality is kinda lame right now, but we will fix that ASAP.

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But the boomers were 'entitled to their entitlements'

Nice piece by John Moore in the National Post on just who is and is not whining about entitlement.

Setting aside the fact that this intergenerational hectoring dates back to Socrates, let us ask: Who exactly is making the charge? Quebec has had low tuition rates for a half century. That means almost every living adult in the province, having already been afforded a plum goodie, is now wagging his finger at the first generation that will be asked to pay the tab. So who really is entitled here?

And a nicer piece on why he wrote it. (link mine)

I wrote the column because for three days in a row I was on radio and television with panels of angry men who make six figure salaries complaining about all these horrible kids and all these awful lazy unemployed people who don't want to move to find work. I am not siding with the students but I just don't want to be one of those men. That same genus grumbled its way through the sixties, indignant about young people who were too selfish to die in Viet Nam. They also spent the 1890s fighting reforms to get kids out of factories and into schools. What was the point of educating them when they were just going to go back to a factory anyway?

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Credit where credit is due

Hurray for Constable Bubbles. He has done the right thing in identifying fellow police officers who are accused of breaking the law. More cops should do the same.
That it is considered exceptional or noteworthy behaviour for a police officer to report illegal activity when other police officers are involved speaks volumes about the state of modern policing.
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No bad jobs, just lazy Canadians

 “There is no bad job. The only bad job is not having a job.You do what you have to do to make a living.”
-Finance Minister Jim Flaherty 

(WARNING: As with most things related to Jim Flaherty, the following is decidedly not safe for work, unless you work in the porn industry, organized crime, politics or the media)





‘There’s a group of Canadians who need a nudge back into the workforce.’
-Dan Kelly, The Canadian Federation of Independent Business

Yes, Dan Kelly, that what is holding so many unemployed people back from resuming happy, successful careers - they just need a little nudge to take that no-benefits, minimum-wage job scrubbing toilets or flipping burgers instead of sitting around on their Master's degree and 15 years of job experience and waiting for that crappy entry-level office clerk or call centre job to open up. 

All those people who used to have good jobs making widgets or keeping the paperwork flowing or providing important services just need to accept their new lot in life as overqualified occasional office temps now that senior management has closed the plant or cut the department or reorganized to make the company "leaner and meaner" so that the stockholders can get that extra half a percentage point added to the value of their portfolio. 

Yes, there is dignity in all work. As long as we have strong labour standards laws, that much won't change. But the idea that any but a miniscule number of people are content spending their lives working just long enough to qualify for EI and then quitting to collect pogey until it runs out is idiotic. It is a notion that is popular among a certain group of people - those who have never been out of work for a significant amount of time.

Making the unemployed jump through more hoops to keep from ending up homeless and starving will not bring back those widget-making and paper-pushing jobs. Making it tougher for people to survive the ebb and flow of business cycles and casino capitalism will not help them find work or improve the economy.  

You know who really needs a nudge back into the workforce? Investors, venture capitalists, business owners and other wealthy people who don't work for a living anymore. Those people who are absolutely certain that the folks relying on food banks to feed their kids are just lazy and living it up on their dime. Those people who, having made a fortune of some size with the help of publicly-educated workers, tax-funded transportation networks, government subsidies to business, state-imposed copyright and patent protection, consumer protection and workplace safety rules that keep them out of the same tax-funded courts that allow them to enforce contracts and punish those who would steal from them, think they made that fortune completely on their own and that it is outrageous that they should  pay more taxes than someone who is barely making ends meet. Those people who think they shouldn't have to pay to fund the school system because they send their kids to private schools. Those people need to be nudged out of their comfort zone.

They need to spend a month waiting tables and living in a studio apartment with two kids. They need to work three mornings a week at Walmart and nights at 7/11 and deliver pizzas in-between to make the rent. They need to work a couple or three 12-hour shifts catching chickens or stocking shelves overnight. They need to spend a few weeks riding the bus two hours each way to their job washing dishes or cleaning hotel rooms. They need to live on social assistance for a month. 

Some of them did some of  those things once upon a time in the distant past when we had much more generous social programs and a society in which a family could get by on one average wage paycheque. Some of them pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and worked hard and scrimped and saved to get where they are, but now seem to want to punish people who want to do the same despite all the bootstraps having been outsourced to the third world.

A lot of them are competent at their jobs and were clever enough to excel in a profession that pays well, but now feel that they shouldn't have to pay a fair share to keep those less clever and competent or just less lucky from falling into abject poverty.

Some of those people need more than a nudge to relearn good citizenship and basic empathy, and I suspect Dan Kelly is one of them.

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Apparently you can't make a casserole without pepper

 How do you get half-a-million Montrealers into the streets when hockey season is over? Pepper-spray them off the terrace at the corner cafe.




(if the title of the post confuses you, maybe this will clear things up)
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holiday Monday is all right for uke fighting?

the original

the cover




For 14 years in Japan, this was my homesickness theme song. I even got to perform it with a local jazz band in my local pub a few times...


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Why I Support the Quebec Student Protests

Because this is what the other side does.



My French isn't good enough to follow the conversation very precisely, but that doesn't really matter. There is nothing anyone could have said to that police officer short of a direct threat to their life and limb that would justify the use of pepper spray. And that isn't the gist of the conversation here.
Nope, Constable 728 is just pepper-spraying non-violent people for the heinous crime of getting on her nerves because she can. Because she knows that nothing very bad will happen to her for bullying people to whom she has taken a dislike. My bet is that, at worst, she loses a few days pay and gets very stern 10-second lecture ("don't do that in front of a camera again, 728").

While some are calling the protesting students in Quebec a bunch of spoiled crybabies for taking to the streets after the provincial government announced it was going to double tuition for post-secondary education, I have to admit I'd have joined similar demonstrations if I were a student.
Imagine you were a businessperson with a widget factory. If a supplier you had a four year-vendor contract with suddenly told you it was going to double its prices regardless of the contract, you'd call your lawyers to sue for breach of contract and look for another vendor, right?
Well, in this case the vendor has a monopoly. There are not a lot of French-language universities or trade schools in North America outside of Quebec.
Eventually, another company would come along to supply your widget factory. But students don't have the luxury of waiting around for a private post-secondary education system to arise, they are in the middle of earning a degree or a diploma which has just effectively doubled in price.
And when they complain about it in a meaningful way, when they have the temerity to inconvenience others, the goon squad gets sent in.

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Abso-fucking-lutely

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That will teach them

Masked thugs run amok at G20 summit in Toronto

So another report has blasted the Toronto Police and OPP for their misdeeds during the G20.
I'm sure the harsh punishment meted out against al the police officers who broke the law will teach them the error of their ways and stop the police from abusing their authority ever...oh wait.
Of the 1,000 people arrested that weekend, fewer than 50 have been convicted of anything and only a handful have been sentenced to any time in jail. Of course, among the dozens of cops who violated rights, assaulted innocent people and abused their authority, not even a handful have been disciplined, let alone charged criminally. Even in cases where the perpetrators are known.
I keep reading otherwise reasonable people complaining about "masked thugs" involved in the G20 protests and the Quebec student protests and lauding the Conservative government's new law to put people in prison for wearing masks at a demonstration.
Given that police make a point of trying to video and photograph everyone in the crowd, even a peaceful demonstrations, and given what we know about how the security apparatus in Canada works these days (sending people abroad to to be tortured, handing over information on citizens to foreign governments, compiling dossiers on citizens engaged in legitimate exercise of their  democratic rights, infiltrating protest groups with informants and agent provocateurs, etc etc) and given the use of facial recognition software by the security agencies, one would have to be an idiot or a martyr not to wear a mask at a demonstration.
That is what our democracy has come to –– citizens are afraid to show their faces at a protest for fear of government reprisal.



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The vilest thing I've seen in a long time

Dear human race,
I am very, very disappointed in you.
Sincerely,
Rev.Paperboy


P.S. Is it something in the water in parts of the country? Does repeated exposure to loud bangs cause some kind of subtle brain damage? Is it blood poisoning from sucking on lead bullets? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?

Just knowing that someone was sick enough to make this shooting range target make me furious.

Knowing that they were sold out of them in two days makes me wonder if the Chinese communists weren't on to something with their idea of re-education camps, because until these kind of people learn the error of their ways or are sent away somewhere, Western society is completely screwed.

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Reading list update

An update on my Read 50 Books This Year project:

17. Another Day Another Dungeon by Greg Constikyan
A lighthearted comic fantasy novel that reads like a session of Dungeons and Dragons among a reasonably intelligent group of friends with decent senses of humour. Not as over the top as Robert Aspirin's now-nearly-unreadable MYTH series, but not exactly canonical either. You can judge this one by the cover. Moderately entertaining, but I won't be searching the used bookstore for the rest of the series.

18. The Essential Ellison by Harlan Ellison
This 1000+ page tome is the main reason its been so long since I posted an update to this list as it took me a while to plow through. A collection of some of Ellison's best short stories, novellas and essays from the 50's through to the early 90's. This covers the first 35 years of his career, and I'd love to get hold of the updated version that includes the 90's and early 2000's. Say what you want about Harlan Ellison's curmudgeonliness and ego, the mofo can write circles around most of us hacks. Endlessly inventive, horrifying and captivating.

19.Watch Your Back! by Donald E. Westlake
Another day, another Dortmunder comic caper novel. I love these, but they are like eating potato chips - you can't stop until there is no more.

20. Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick
Another grandmaster of science fiction, best know for his paranoia and dark, dystopian view of the future. Another guy who can write circles around us all. Highly recommended.
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A proud day

Not only did I start a new job today as copy editor for a national newspaper chain (that's right Canada: I M IN UR PAYPUR EDITIN UR NOOZE) but my son, 12,  greeted me when I came home with the news that he is going into the family business. He is getting a paper route.

And yes, he knows about my internet handle. He also knows my professional history, from delivering the Sault Star as a boy to writing the high school pages and then covering Rotary Club meetings when I was 16 in Hamilton, the grind on the weeklies in across Southern Ontario (Ingersoll, Caledonia, Port Dover, Listowel, Napanee, Picton and Stoney Creek) and the big money jobs for great metropolitan newspapers in Tokyo and elsewhere.

This makes him the fourth generation of our clan to bring you your daily newspaper. My grandfather briefly drove a newspaper delivery truck and my father was a paperboy for several years.

As the blues song says "They call me the paperboy, because I can deliver"

That song hasn't been recorded yet, so enjoy this song, by another Paperboy:


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Harmonica Players Suck (Except When They Blow)

Free 28-page guide to blowing (and sucking) your brains out.
Make music (or a reasonable facsimile thereof)!
Amaze your friends!
Confound your enemies!
Annoy the hell out of your roommates and neighbours!

Click here and print the document and learn to play the Rev. Paperboy way!

(When printing, print out the first seven pages, flip them and then print out the last 7. The page labelled "8" is actually the inside cover)

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Ford threatens to (b)eat reporter

As comical as I find the latest shenanigan involving duh Mayor of Toronto, the underlying story that Star reporter Daniel Dale was researching when he was mugged by duh Mayor (what else would you call it when some bellowing thug runs up to you in a public park, threatens to punch you and demands you hand over your cell phone?) is one worthy of a closer look in that it says so much about Rob Ford's outlook on life.
In a nutshell, duh Mayor wants to buy a piece of public parkland adjacent to his house, claiming he wants it so that his kids have more room to play.
Heaven forfend that duh Mayor's kids should have to rub elbows with the other kids in the neighbourhood by playing in a public park. Buying the scrap of land in front of the community centre will mean more room for the the Ford children to play, but it will also mean less room for all the other kids in the neighbourhood to play in the public park.

How very Ford Nation of the duh Mayor.
Maybe he can have the local buses cancelled so that his kid's street hockey games aren't disturbed, too.

As an aside, I'm a bit surprised at the lack of quick thinking on the part of Star reporter Daniel Dale. Rob Ford is literally twice Dale's size and had it come to fisticuffs, Dale could have been in considerable trouble, but I strongly suspect he could have just run laps around the park until duh Mayor collapsed breathless. Well, okay half a lap.
To shriek "please don't eat hit me" and surrender the tools of the trade at the cocking of a fist the way he did makes us all look bad. Daniel, if you had just taken the punch like a real old-time newspaperman, not only would you never be allowed to buy another drink in downtown Toronto, but the cops would have been forced to arrest Rob Ford and you'd probably own that nice house of his and the adjacent parkland by the end of the year.
At the very least, I hope this incident has convinced Dale of the merits of keeping a can of bear repellant in the old reporter's kit bag, right next to the first aid kit and the extra batteries.

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"How can you run when you know?"

13 seconds, 67 bullets fired, four killed, one paralyzed for life, eight others wounded. RIP Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder and Sandra Lee Scheuer It ain't over until it is over.

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'this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender"

Happy 93rd birthday Pete Seeger! Would somebody give this guy a Nobel prize already?



(btw, this has been the wallpaper on my computer desktop for about the last six months)


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One of my biggest heroes

Get comfortable and open your ears real wide and listen to one of my favourite people anywhere, anytime. The film doesn't begin to capture Seeger's enormous personal charisma. He has a power over crowds that his hard to explain. Thank FSM he's on our side. Tweet

who would you call on in a crisis?

After considerable discussion with Mrs. Rev.Paperboy we have come to the conclusion that in the event of a major crisis, if we had to pick five people to stand with and count on absolutely, no matter the circumstances - be it civil unrest, natural disaster or some kind of court-appointed disaster, the five people we would want at our side would be my parents, her parents and depending on circumstances Dave and/or a really good lawyer.
Character and experience will tell in a crisis, and we already know how some of these people will behave, except maybe the hypothetical lawyer.


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