Look into the Mirror

It occurred to me on my quiet way to work today, the day after Canada Day, that Canadians still live in the best country in the world.  You can stop rolling your eyes now, I saw that.  As I was sitting on the nearly empty express bus, watching the sun shine across the Ottawa river, listening to and being ennobled by the message in  "Northern Wish", the Rheostatics' painterly paean to our home and native land,  got off the bus and walked in to my particular workplace overhung with gently waving red-and-white flags, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of national pride and gratitude for being able to live and work here.


Despite all human attempts to destroy the planet that we live on (witness the current, horrific belching of thousands of gallons of crude oil every day in the Gulf of Mexico), economic disaster lurking at every turn, wars and injustices continuously being carried out in countries all across the globe; pointless, ridiculously expensive meetings of world leaders right here at home (see post below) and hundreds of other daily annoyances - some large, some small and insignificant in the broad scheme of things - we still have it better than most.  Hell, you want bad news, you know where to find it.  We're bombarded with it every day from all sorts of different angles. There are a thousand valid reasons why we should all be stalking Parliament Hill with placards, megaphones and possibly molotov cocktails, shouting angrily in protest of one thing or another and demanding justice, fair treatment and funding for our own particular pet cause - what used to be called "special interests". Save for a misguided, vocal minority infected with a virulent, wrongheaded sense of entitlement, Canadians don't do that.  What we do best is quietly go about our daily business to the best of our ability.  The old-fashioned work ethic that saw our predecessors through hard times in the past continues - it just never makes the news.

Don't get me wrong - I'm in favour of many of the things that reasonable, intelligent people write and/or protest about. I also believe our country needs a bit of a political and economic reboot.  There are real problems that I won't diminish.  I'm not naïve enough to believe that Canada really looks like a Group of Seven painting - but if you get far enough out of the city, it does...  What we often forget in our efforts to shout above the din is that there's still an awful lot of good here. Our national identity is something we've struggled with since 1867, but the best thing about the Canada that our parents grew up in was that anyone with a dream could succeed with enough tenacity (and a bit of luck).  Somehow, even with all the doom and gloom of the world today, it's still possible.  Tune out the naysayers - the world, our little corner in particular, is what you make of it.


 Happy Canada Day! 

Does Your TV Suffer from Constant, Irritating "Judder"?

Well,doesn't it? Of course it does, you idiot!!! You just don't know it yet.

Apparently any flat panel LCD TV that isn't a 120 Hz Sharp does. What about the new, 240 Hz Sonys? According to the lowest-common-denominator-higher-numbers-equals-better crowd at Suture Shop, it must be four times better than regular HDTVs. Absolute horse shite, I say.

Unfortunately for me, that atrocity isn't a typo. I can picture the 24 year old unshaven, hoodie-wearing Justin Long lookalike copywriter creating this gibberish and being congratulated with high-fives from his geeky stoner colleagues as he comes up with the winning adjective five minutes before they're all set to hit the peeler bar, bongs in tow.

Or maybe I'm just a cranky old bastard. Yeah, that's probably it.

According to those in the tech-know, this sort of motion-smoothing technology for home television has nearly no basis in reality, and needs to be turned off when watching anything but the NFL or Venus and Serena battling each other on the clay. Crikey - sign me up!
"Where can I dumps my wheelbarrow full of moneys so's I can walk off wit one a' these babies?"

It's an old caveat, but ferchrissakes, people, don't believe everything you read in a Future Shop or Best Buy flyer. Even if it sounds all Web 3.0-ish. After being in sales for twenty years and seeing some pretty underhanded, shady crap being pulled on a daily basis, never trust a salesman, saleswoman, or any other gendered thing trying to sell you goods and/or services.

In other words, trust your eyes, not some slimy greaseball with the morals of John Wayne Gacy. Now, excuse me while I go check the Leafs game for a surplus of "judder". I'm sure that's what's causing my unhappiness.

Things Continue To Get Extremely Worse.

Original Post From July; quite prescient given the current predictions of depression-esque tendencies in the economy.

How true. Very poorly worded, but true. The title quote was taken from a union representative in Oshawa commenting on the recent GM truck plant closure there after the government threw as much spare cash as they could at GM, but it applies to a lot of things recently. Car companies don't really deserve government bailouts, do they? How about the local Mom & Pop type stores that are constantly going under due to the overkill of retail in this country? Blame Wal-Mart if you will, but there's a simple reason we're getting "extremely worse" in this country and in the US of (DO)A...

We're lazy and greedy, and getting "worser" by the minute. I should know, I work for the Federal Government. You want entitlement issues? Try unionized government workers with strong socialist tendencies who want to do as little as possible and get paid handsomely for their inactivity. Most criticisms levelled at the way Government is conducted are spot-on.

So, greed got us into this mess - how do we propose to get out of it? Why, naturally, by spending our way back into prosperity. If that's true, can I actually justify my recent insane flat panel HDTV purchase merely by it's incremental contribution to the GNP, thereby allowing me to sleep at night? Yes, I Can™! Thanks, Obama!

Unlike Kent Brockman, I'm not pointing the finger squarely at you in particular, as I can be firmly lumped in with the gooey masses. We still have a false sense of entitlement in this country that is to be found nowhere else in the world save the USA, and possibly Sweden.

In many third-world developing nations, the mere act of getting out of bed and walking to the local market can be a matter of life and death. In North America, we still take so much for granted, that when we do fall it'll be ten times harder than what anyone can forecast.

Your stock market performance or new BMW M3 isn't the topic of conversation when you can't scrape together enough to pay the mortgage, and roving bands of starving Liberals are your biggest late-night worry. It's a fine line between comfort and being hungry, but you always know when you've crossed it, and we're not there yet. As a result, I don't hold out much hope for things to improve. Like an addict, we have to hit rock bottom and sleep in a few dumpsters before our friends call an intervention. I wonder what the state of the Union (and Canada) will be like six months from now when all the post-coronation Obama hype has died down and we can all get back to cold hard reality.

Despite my pessimistic tone, I actually think (or is it hope) that we can get through this crisis. Nothing is more inventive than an addict looking for his next fix. After all, you can always find the money somewhere.

Here's the real reason Ford is in trouble...

Wow. That's all I can say when I go to the Ford UK site and take a long look around, carefully wiping the drool from the keyboard in hopes it doesn't short out. It is precisely cars like this that are needed in North America, and have been for some time. It has taken $1.40 / litre gasoline and the resulting backlash against large gas guzzling behemoths to make the automotive sector wake the hell up from their self-induced 15 year SUV coma.

Reading the Globe (and also the Mail) today, I realized that Ford in the USA and Canada still don't have a clue as to what the North American market wants or is willing to spend on a small car. They have finally announced a change in direction, but it's probably too little too late for Ford Canada.
There are plans to finally bring the European Focus to our shores, along with the snazzy new Fiesta and some other interesting-sounding vehicles by 2010, but - no wagon, and only a maybe on the 5 door hatchback. I've owned two Focus wagons, a 2001 and a 2004, both were superlative in terms of style, gas mileage, versatility, cargo storage and overall driving satisfaction. The redesign in 2005 made the Focus into just another ordinary car. They sucked all the distinctiveness out of it with the lame chrome grille and Crown Vic-inspired dashboard, as well as the overly cheap interior materials. Ford are completely missing the boat on the small crossover / wagon sector dominated by the likes of the newly-revamped Toyota Matrix / Pontiac Vibe twins, and the utterly horrible Dodge Caliber. Another opportunity lost.

A telling quote from Ford advisor Joseph Phillipi says "the key (to Ford's success) will be making those vehicles less European in terms of the touchy-feely aspects." What a profoundly stupid comment. Less European? Ford has made blunder after blunder in terms of North American model releases, and they hold up the Contour and the Merkur as examples of flops that demonstrate why European cars don't sell well in North America. Unfortunately, those vehicles didn't sell because they were really freaking crappy, not because they were European-designed. The UK model lineup is much better than what we are spoon-fed on this side of the pond.

Here's what Ford and people like Mr. Phillipi think we want:

Yeah, an underpowered engine, chrome bars on the grille, an automatic transmission, a trunk and fake side gills is exactly what I want. Riiiight.

I also love being told what I want instead of being listened to. Last year, Ford discontinued the hatchback and wagon versions of the Focus, against the protestations of the public. Those models were the only reason to buy one in the first place.



Ford Canada, so we're clear, here's what I want: This exact model, with no changes except the steering wheel on the left side.
I, and thousands like me would gladly pay a little more for the Euro Focus as is, not "Americanized". I'm sure Mr. Phillippi has considered a Woody Wagon version of this car for us dumb-ass North Americans.

In short, make this car available here and I'll buy it. Keep telling me what you think I want and be prepared for bankruptcy. It's that simple.