The Health Care System in Canada

Or why are there so many old people who live in Regina? Having lived here a year, I certainly have noticed a huge majority of the population is older then me. Which has it's up side in that it makes me feel young and spritely. On the down side you had better have good damn eyesight when you are coming up on those cross walks because some elder citizen of Regina might jump out, well they don't exactly jump out more on the lines of they either manually push themselves very slowly out with their walker or have one of those 4 wheel drive motorized things that go anywhere, either way, you don't want to hit them. But as I swerve and dodge these mobile elders, I wonder, how in the hell do they live so long up here?

Sure the summers are fine, but most of these people don't leave in the winter and they are still here in the spring. If you look at the obituaries, living to one hundred is not out of the question.

After doing some research I have come up with the reason why so many people live so long up here.

It's because they are all waiting to get a hip replacement and the hell if they are going to leave this earth without getting one, or when they do get one, by god and by golly they are going to get their monies worth out of it.

Oh and can I tell you how tough Barb's mom is? She is thinking about having the hip replacement with only a local, she says lots of people do it up here, just get a spinal and be done with it. I asked her, do they also give you a bullet to bite on?

I swear the people are up here are tougher then nails strong like bulls. America could learn a lot from the tenacity and the strength of people who live in the northern prairies.

Same-Sex Law needs to go

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

What law is this that Noreen Drake speaks about in a letter to the editor of the Leader Post on September 14th, 2006? Is it that if two or more people of the same sex congregate in the same place then they must be arrested? Is this a new law that I don't know about that is legislating what goes on in our bedrooms? Because I am all for a law that says having the same old sex the same old way really, really needs to go because boredom in the bedroom is a marriage killer.

But wait as I read more I realize, it's not that Noreen want to try out that Come a Come a Chameleon Karma Sutra book she has heard so much about. No sadly she is against Same-Sex Marriage.

In her first sentence she stated
In a just society - in a democracy which is Canada - the new same-sex marriage legislation is unjust.

She goes on to say: The bottom line is that it's not fair to pass a law that affects so critical a change to the character of our society without the majority agreement of our society.

She is hoping that in the fall session Prime Minister Stevie Harper would re-table the same-sex marriage legislation.

Where to start, where to start. Now I could go on an extended rant about her bigotry towards gays and lesbians and what is so wrong about giving them the same rights as every other human being on earth has, but that has been written and spoken by better people then me.

For me if I were to compare gays and lesbians getting married vs. more and more young Canadian men and women being killed daily in Afghanistan I would have to say Noreen, that having Canada go from being a peace keeping country to being in an active war which brought down what was once the country of USSR and happened without the vote of the country would seem to be a bigger issue then people who love each other getting married, paying taxes, volunteering in the community and helping their neighbors. How committed love "affects the character" of the community is beyond me. How 100's of young people coming back from a war dead or severely injured will affect the character of the community is something that should maybe concern the population more.

Honestly Noreen, I know of three couples in Regina and 1 in Saskatoon that have been married in the past 6 months and I haven't seen a decline in the character of the community, no increase of crime or decline in civility. Oh of course there is the issue of people falling into the dumpsters out at the landfill and that is of course something I worry about and should everyone. The city hired a safety consultant to analyze why people are falling into these dumpster containers while unloading their trucks. Hell they could have hired me and payed me a whole bunch less, it's simple, combine alcohol and gravity and well people are going to be accidentally dumpster diving into the landfill containers.

Sorry off the subject. The truth is, sometimes the government makes decisions that the people aren't ready to make. Sometimes the government makes right decisions as in same-sex marriage and sometimes they make wrong decisions as in Afghanistan. Two decisions, two different governments - one creates equality, one creates death.

So Noreen which of these would you want to vote on?

Lesbians foaming at the mouth

Lucy Lawless or as her friends and stalkers like to call her "Xena" is on TV again bringing alive the hopes of millions of lesbians and cross dressers around the world that Xena didn't die and maybe just maybe they will do a movie.

Lucy can be seen on Celebrity Duets which is on Fox TV on Thursday and Friday nights takes has been singers with has been actors and athletes forces them to sing duets together. http://www.fox.com/celebrityduets/

But Celebrity Duets is a far cry from the leather wearing, sword wielding, dark hero of our fantasies. Trust me in saying that our fantasies were damaged almost beyond repair with her being a biologist of some kind dealing with killer bats in New Orleans or human eating locusts across America and *gag* being married to some wimp with children. Seems to me they could have had her at least wear a leather coat in one of those poor quality movies to give us a hint, a prayer of what once was but looks like will never be again.

To see why the lesbian community is foaming at the mouth more then when they killed off the tennis player on the "L" Word go to the message board on Celebrity Duets and read the responses to the post that Lawless sucks. Lord did that bring the die hards out of the woodwork.

If you listen very closely when
you look at this picture you can
hear millions of lesbians chanting
Xena, Xena, Xena

Lucy though not the greatest singer there has potential, mostly because she can do no wrong has legs that go all the way up and she's Xena damn-it, why they put her with Kenny Loggins is beyond me. She will be gone soon enough if they continue to force her to sing his songs. I mean how many times can you sing Foot Loose anyway before it loses its charm and reminds you of how god awful the 80's actually were. (Correction by writer - the celebrity will be teamed up with a different singer every week. Let us all pray that they won't team her with Michael Bolton)

Where I stand on the subject is this: If they are going to put her in badly made movies about mutated killer bugs and blood sucking killer flying rodents and have her sing with aged rock stars, then why in God's name don't they just do a damn Xena movie? I say better to get chaffed wearing leather that is a bit too tight then singing 80's songs that make our skin crawl worse then the man eating killer locusts do.

Contact Lens

So I have contact lens. You would know if I was wearing contact lens because by the evening I am blinking my eyes every few minutes like a barn owl looking for mice but without that annoying twisting the head around, Exorcist thing, because that has nothing to do with wearing contacts. If anyone you know is twisting their heads completely around and blaming it on their contact lens, they are not only liars but they are possessed by the devil and you shouldn't hang with them unless you are a priest with issues with your mother. If by chance you do decide to hang with them, expect your dry cleaning bill will go through the roof because there is nothing harder to get out of a nice outfit then green pea soup puke.

(This is what happens when you sleep with your contacts in. Do not let this happen to you. The puking thing, well that is a whole other post)

I got contacts because I thought it would be easier then wearing glasses. Faulty logic is the foundation of most mistakes, fucked up and otherwise insane decisions. Examples - War in Iraq, thinking that because George W stands upright that he is human and therefore has common sense and that contact lens are comfortable alternative to glasses. Oh yeah it is much harder to put glasses on the bridge of the nose then it is to take these little bits of blue plastic stuff and then to somehow be able to touch your eyeball and have them stay in the eyeball. Yep those damn glasses are a pain in the ass.

It is also important to listen and read the instructions about the care and wearing of these evil bits of plastic. To not wash your hands before you put them against your eye can set you off for hours of glorious pain. Like who knew a bit of salt could act like a acetylene cutting torch ripping it's initials into your eyeball. Now some people would take them out immediately and clean them. No not me, I will continue to wear them until the time when I start turning my head around and around. Because to take them out is even more insane, to put two fingers against an eyeball and pull at what you think is the contact lens but really that delicate covering of your eyeball, whatever that is called and to not do it once but enough times so that your eye is bright red and tears are running down your face. That is insanity.

The other thing they don't discuss with you at the doctors office is what happens when you put them in the wrong eye. I did that the other day. Don't know how, but I did do it. Wondered why I was having problems reading and why being sober and all that I kept walking into walls. Didn't figure it out until that night after I took them out. Went to bed and dreamt that someone had dropped acid in my coffee and was on an all night acid trip. In the morning I deduced that somehow I switched the stupid bits of blue plastic.

So what have we learned today people?

Wash your hands often
don't use tabasco sauce unless you are planning on washing your hands a lot
If you are walking into walls, check that you didn't put your contacts in wrong or get your ass into treatment
If your friend's head is spinning like a children's top and she is saying disparaging remarks about your mother and puking, she is either possessed by the devil-
or a real bitchy bulimic
and in either case you might want to stay away from her.

Canadian Postal Service

Other then the wood dust sniffing termite alien posing as a postal worker, I have had no bad experiences with the postal service up here. My brother the professor who lives in Peterbrough on the other hand has made many disparaging remarks about their ability to do their job.

Today in the mail I received a letter from Houston Texas that was generated after I talked to a call service located somewhere in India. I spelled out my address several times with increasing frustration after being asked the city and province name 3 times and the spelling out the postal code slowly "S" as in Sam 4 N -4 "B" as in Boy 9. This I thought was simple, trying to have them understand the word Saskatchewan much less spell the word showed that we may think globally but are still able act incompetently.

Below is the address that I spent a good 10 minutes trying to communicate to with a woman in India. And even though totally wrong it still arrived here in a timely manner, so my hat is off to the Canadian Postal System, but to the outsourcing of services to other countries - Fuck off and also a big old fuck off to Credit Card Companies that cut off your credit when you move to another country.

Global Community My ASS

Meaningful Conversations

My brother Paul recently returned from a trip to Georgia. Not the Georgia of Peaches and people who still believe that George W. Bush is a good president but the Georgia that is in between Turkey and Russia.

When us regular people are asked how we spent our summer vacation we usually say, went to the beach, the cottage (that is what they say up here, they don't go to cabins they go to their cottage) or they did really fun stuff like work on their houses until their back was hunched over and their fingers were bloody stubs and tears of pain slid down their face that was streaked with wood dust and sweat. Yes it my summer reminded me of that Movie with Sally Field Places in the Heart - the poor widowed woman who had to work with her children and the black man in the cotton fields under the blazing summer sun, her fingers bloody and poked and swollen from picking cotton all day long while the blind man at the house did his caning and made dinner for those poor folk, cause they just had to get their cotton picked and to the cotton gin before anyone else so they could get that hundred dollars, they just had too. Obviously it seems that while my brother spent his time in the country of Georgia in my mind while sanding and painting and sniffing varathane I spent my time in the depression in the state of Georgia.

So my bro the professor spent hung out with the people of Georgia doing what professors do when they are doing their thing. Which I have no clue. But they do it so good for them.

When he comes back he usually visits my parents for a week. Second day he was there I get this call from my mother. Barb hands me the phone which I cradle in my scabbed over bloody puffed up fingers and Paul is on the phone. So we talk for a few minutes, he bitching about his computer he bitching about working, then we both began complaining about the custom charges that I had to pay for my wedding gifts from my parents. There is nothing better then being able to have a sibling to bitch with.

Our bitching was interrupted by my mother in the background yelling SAY SOMETHING MEANINGFUL TO EACH OTHER! THIS IS PHONE CALL IS ON MY DIME.

Well the pressure to preform was now on us and I fear we failed miserably. We were able to say we love each other but when you have a mother circling in the background wanting their children to bond like some genetic superglue we did what we knew what to do, we bitched about the Canadian Postal System. I really have nothing against the system, other then the one guy who was really an alien who sniffed me but Paul, well he could spend hours on it.

I have no clever ending to this post, other then to say that I have nothing against the Canadian Postal System, so please continue to deliver my mail.

Thanks