::: Looks about right. ::: If it weren't so pathetic, I would be crying. ::::

Here: check this out. ::: 25-Oct-2011 MACLEAN'S MAGAZINE SURVEY Categories: Econowatch Rank your income: Where do you stand compared to the rest of Canada? Calculator Answer: "Your income is in the bottom 28%." ::: Have you lost your minds, MacLeans? You think I'd tell you? Your Stats are skewered. ::: by Erica Alini on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 12:59pm - The Occupy Wall Street movement and its various Canadian spinoffs are reviving the public debate about income distribution north of the border. On Friday, NDP leadership hopeful Brian Topp cast his lot with the “eat the rich” zeitgeist by advocating income tax hikes on the wealthy. Others are skeptical that heating up the fiscal pressure on the top earners is the most effective way to tackle yawning inequality. Regardless of what constitutes the best policy cure, Occupy movements across the globe–and they’ve spread throughout the developed world–have put their finger on a real and widespread malaise of advanced economies. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-2000s inequality rose in most of the rich countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and in Canada income disparities have surpassed the OECD average. Granted, our super-rich are not quite as “super” as America’s wealthiest. In 2007, the threshold to qualify as one of Canada’s top one per cent of earners was a relatively modest $169,000 a year, compared to the U.S.’s eye-popping $400,000. Still, between 1980 and 2005 the earnings of Canada’s bottom income group fell by 20.6 per cent, according to Statistics Canada, whereas top incomes rose by 16.4 per cent. Folks in between generally saw their salaries stagnate like their peers in the U.S., where increased worker productivity has not translated into comparable income gains for the middle class. Whether it’s a matter of taxing the top, or propping up the bottom and the middle, income distribution is likely to become a hot-button issue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Calculations are based on data from the Canada Revenue Agency’s Interim Income Statistics report, 2011 Edition (2009 tax year), Table 2 (All returns by total income class). Note that percentiles refer to income brackets, so an income of $29,999 falls into the bottom 51.9 per cent of Canadian tax-filers, whereas an income of $30,000 belongs to the top 48.1 per cent. Also, incomes below $1 and above $249,999 are not pictured proportionally. We’d like to also thank the Conference Board of Canada and Armine Yalnizyan of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for their assistance with research for the calculator. ::: Just don't ask me for a loan, eh? :::

::: "Leaving home....she won't buy me Sphero for Christmas! She said it's an Apple and that she ate all the apples she's going to eat. So there. I'm on my way. Try and stop me!"

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first. ::: There are only three questions in anybody's life that need to be answered. ::: 1. Who Am I? And like the answer. ::: 2. Where am I going? And like the answer. ::: 3. Who is going with me? And like the answer. ::: Answer those three questions, get them firmly in your mind and the rest is not all that complicated. :::

::: So. Why Nadja? You waiting for a train? ::: I think she's waiting for Laddie. :::: I told you, he's not coming. :::

Here lies my dog - may every dog that dies live in security - as this dog did.

[Laddie] If a dog's prayers were answered - bones would rain down from the sky. :::

Facts: ten million dogs and cats are put to death in shelters each year. An unspayed female cat, her mate and all of their offspring, producing 2 litters per year, with 2.8 surviving kittens per litter can total: 1 year: 12 2 years: 67 3 years: 376 4 years: 2,107 5 years: 11,801 6 years: 66,088 7 years: 370,092 8 years: 2,072,514 9 years: 11,606,077 An unspayed female dog, her mate and all of their puppies, if none are ever neutered or spayed, add up to: 1 year: 16 2 years: 128 3 years: 512 4 years: 2,048 5 years: 12,288 6 years: 67,000 Female cats that have not been spayed will come in heat (or estrus) at stages in their lives. This may happen from as young as the age of 4 months and recur seasonally (usually summer seasons with more daylight). The cat stays in heat for normally 4-6 days and during the summer season will come in heat again every 2-3 weeks. These periods may vary widely. The cat will come out of heat and the cycles will end once the cat has mated or the season ends. After giving birth a female cat may come in heat again in as soon as 7 days although this usually happens after about 4 weeks. Female cats can be spayed almost any time from as young as 4 months. DO IT!!!

A couple of Abbysinian kittens got the smoochies. ::: Before Nadja, I had "Charlie" a gorgeous hunk of a Red Abbysinian cat. He was seven years old when I obtained him from a friend who had retired him from her breeding programme and he lived with us for seven more years. When Charlie died, my dog Laddie went into a very deep depression which caught me by surprise because there was a big age difference between them and while they were good friends, I hadn't realized just how much Laddie cared. Laddie had been brought up from puppyhood by two cats, a little Bluepoint Siamese I named "China Blue" (or "Bluesy" as I sometimes called her) and Charlie. Laddie thought for years he was a cat! He loved cats throughout his life. He outlived them both.::: Because I simply can't resist a good story - Charlie, the Abby, was a very dignified cat. A real gentleman, as male cats go. I didn't much care for his name as "Charlie" didn't seem appropriately dignified for such a magnificent animal. It wasn't his registered name, but it's the one my girlfriend had called him for seven years, so try as I might, I was reluctant to change it. Well as it happened one evening when I was making supper in the kitchen Charlie wandered in and sat in the the doorway, ramrod straight, gazing at me intently and this is what he said: "From now on I wish to be addressed as King Charles." - I laughed. "King Charles? You want to be a King? Must be a joke, Charlie." His golden eyes blinked slowly, "I'm not. My name is KING CHARLES." With that announcement having been declared he slowly turned around, whiplike tail straight in the air quivering in obvious self-satisfaction he slowly walked away leaving me cackling like a mad hen. King Charles! Really. There was room in the house for only one king and that job was already taken. I never forgot that little conversation of ours. Sheesh! Two kings was one too many. He remained simply, "Charlie". Maybe you just had to be there and know Abbysinians. It still makes me laugh at the memory of it. Wherever he is, I hope he's being a benevolent king. :-) \

Yes, I know that a lot of Americans are bound to be infuriated about my stance on the subject of porn and obscenity what with their Second Right Amendment to their Constitution. So be it. I am not American, I do not live in America, we do not have a Second Amendment about freedom of speech. We do have obscenity laws and people have gone to jail for publishing obscenity and actually been deported back to their countries of origin for breaking those laws. Pornography is such a slippery slope straw man legal argument that it is difficult to fight in the Courts on either side of our borders. They also behead and stone people to death for egregious acts in other countries as well. Doesn't mean that I have to embrace any of it. I have as much right to free speech as anyone and I stand by my principles that anything that demeans, demoralizes, objectifies human beings has to answer to a higher level of moral imperative than some Constitution written by men for men at a particular time in history and is not a law, in my not so humble opinion, worth protecting. I cannot just shut up and be quiet and pretend that everything is just lovely the way things are. If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck - it's a duck. P.S.: Okay Th~ maybe not a duck. A quack? lol

PORNOGRAPHY, OBSCENITY ON SOCIAL MEDIA WEB SITES ::: Once a glitch, twice a trend? ::: When it comes to the subject of "erotica", "pornography", "obscenity" the lines in some people's minds have become so fuzzy that they can no longer distinguish between any of them. They have been inculturated by mass media, overexposure in all forms whether it be the print media, television, fashion which continues to stretch the lines of decency, hard core pornography, soft core porn, porn directed by women for women, violence that is every bit as pornographic and obscene as it is pernicious as anything Larry Flynt of Hustler Magazine ever conceived in his twisted mind the effects that have trickled down into a kind of "What the hell you can see it anywhere and everywhere so why not on my blog? My personal responsibility ends where writing a little bumper that runs along the lines of imitation: " Warning - this blog contains adult material which may offend some..." and variations on that theme. ::: In a galling response when I politely requested that a certain blogger of obscene material not subscribe to me, this was his answer: "Well you don't have to look at it. I like reading your blog." Some kind of selective bargaining in those two sentences? I waited for a couple of weeks, seeing him still there in my list of subscribers, I wrote again and this time demanded that he remove me from his list. There is no mechanism in place for me to block him. ::: Now I am stuck with a second guy who has subscribed to me who has stooped to even lower standards of morality and subscribed to my blog. ::: I couldn't tell you if he is a "he", a "she" an "it" or what, but you can take it to the bank that I am not subscribed to porn anything. ::: Just because the statue of David is an exceptional piece of marble carving, the Birth of Venus is a classic work of fine art, that does not equate with you having intercourse with your horse and posting pictures of it in a blog that is open to anyone with a computer and a modem. ::: Most offensive are photographs by the hundreds of what are obviously girls under the age of 18 made up to look like they are 40 in sexual situations of violence and sodomy and worse that ought to scare any parents out of their wits. ::: When such bloggers link themselves to any of my blogs, I am made guilty by association through no choice of my own. It is is the equivalent of giving tacit approval to something that to me is degrading, demoralizing, hatred towards anything female, perpetuates myths of women that still pervades the lives of young women everywhere by objectification, reducing them as mere objects to be used, abused, disabused and not infrequently murdered in cold blood. ::: I object to the desensitizing of pubescent boys who are large consumers of pornography both on and off the internet. :: It is a massive problem for the lawmakers everywhere as it is a contentious subject and laws are written by men most often favouring men. ::: The United States laws governing pornography are singularly different than the same laws in Canada. Community standards in both countries are as wide and long as the borders we both share. ::: I have a very simple way of sorting out the boys from the men and it goes like this: never tell a joke that you couldn't tell in front of your own mother - even if she has a sense of humour. That pretty well covers a lot of issues surrounding smut. ::: This diatribe began when I woke up this morning feeling angry because I am on the horns of a dilemma faced with with Hobson's choice: do I delete my Categorian blog? My ethics says "Yes. If I am to be consistent." My heart says, "How sad, I'll miss a few people who blog there who have wonderful uplifting blogs." ::: I suspect my ethics will win. :::

Gratuitous Ornography I know how to spell ornography. I just don't want to see it. Too much ornography I might end up being in it. I'm neither a virgin nor a prude I know what I look like in the nude. I know what you look like nude. Doesn't mean I want to show it. That would be aw-full-y rude. Wrap it in a plain brown paper bag Mail it to yourself. Wear a greige trench-coat, Bring your bottle of screech, go to a Stag. I've changed more diapers than most. I've seen male pubic hair personal and up close I've seen vaginas from Montreal to Regina I've seen tits and ass, have plenty of my own. Don't need to borrow yours, I'm all grown. If you don't mind, I don't need to see any more. If that's the speed at which you travel, Leave me off your train - I'll take the Greyhound bus and ride on gravel. Even if it means ending up being all alone Here in the rain, I still think you are a royal pain. (c) 2011 - Gwen Beauregard -

It was not a dark and stormy day. It was in 2003. I discovered a thing called WordPress. Sounded suitable for someone pressed for words. That lasted all of an hour. It was just a bad fit. The learning curve was way too steep and I had no idea what I was going to do with something called a "blog", let alone how to use one. ::: Letting it go, a year later I grew curious again as I began reading other people's blogs on the Internet. 'Fascinating', was my first thought. 'How do they do that?' I couldn't even get past why anyone would want to. Unless they had something really, really IMPORTANT to say. I didn't. Then one night I quite literally tripped over something called "Blogger". I read about an hour's worth, thought it couldn't be neurosurgery, put my John Henry on the dotted line and thought I'd turn to letting my dog blog, so I called it 'Lad-a-Dog." At least dogs were a subject I could claim expertise in and one I was totally passionate about. I was soon into trouble because I didn't have a lousy clue what in hang this foreign language "html", "css" "codes", all those acronyms meant and I wasn't a computer science student and there was nobody around for miles to teach me a thing. More than fifteen years of using a computer of one sort or other and I had never even bothered learning to "cut", "copy" or "paste" anything into anything. I was still using my typewriter and a regular ruled pad and ballpoint pens for writing. So, Lad-a-Dog was left hanging, so to speak, by the side of an elm tree while I went off and mowed the neighbour's grass. That neighbour happened to be StumbleUpon which I completely accidentally stumbled into going over Firefox Add-ons and Extensions. I've experimented with more types of computer hardware and software than anybody should ever admit to and keep a straight face. StumbleUpon was just another existential experiment. Then it became a sociologist's dream thesis to meet their requirement for a doctoral degree. Then it just all got out of hand and first thing you know, I'm sitting in the dark, in a rocking chair reading old love letters. "I don't like blogs. And I like people who blog even less." so stated my non-blogging older sister in 2007. "Those people aren't "real" she asserted. Uh huh. Tell me about it. :::

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY AS TOLD BY STUMBLERS THEMSELVES :::: REPRINTED :::: Pt II :::: stumblers - stumbleupon.com I've pasted the fabulous MizRed's response to SU's latest announcement ... it's a very funny tongue in cheek post and she gets her point across with innate style and wit ::: FTP ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dear SU - It pains me to say this but, I want to break up. Things have changed between us and not for the better. But then, it's always been that way. You've always called the shots forcing me to dance to your tune. In the beginning it was like most love affairs. We each had what the other wanted - you had lovely bright background colors, an assortment of fonts and the world at your fingertips. And me, I was new to the world of internet blogging and social networking and I was what you craved the most - a fresh face to be schooled in the language of Stumbleupon. You lured me in with your free toolbar and made it easy for me to love you. Then, after a while, after you knew I was yours, you changed. Yes, yes you did, don't deny it. Subtly and oh so smoothly you introduced "new" formats - changes that you said would allow you to give me more but somehow I always ended up with less. You smugly counted on my love for you and manipulated me into thinking that SU knew best and I, like an idiot, went along with it. Oh yes, I protested, but it fell on deaf ears and still, I hoped and prayed you would see the error of your ways and things would go back to the way they were before, when we first fell in love. At first, I blamed myself. I thought that I was the problem and the reason you had turned your back on me and the reason you started limiting your colors and shut down your fonts was that I had failed to let you know how much I loved you and somehow, someway, if I blogged more, if I posted more photos, revealed more of myself to you that you would realize how much I loved you and things would change. Instead, things got worse. It seemed that the more I blogged and posted and reviewed my love for SU the more you tried to isolate me from the rest of the world. You ran off my "Friends" and called them names like "Subscribers" and "Followers" and when I tried to protest to you, when I begged and pleaded for you to, for once, keep things the way they are, my protestations fell on deaf ears and then you passed me over to your friends at "Get Satisfaction". Oh sure, occasionally you would throw me a bone, like when you introduced the "News" but I realize now that when you meant "NEWS!" you meant your news and not MY news. But still my love for you held fast and I clung to the idea that you loved me because you said you loved me and that the reason you didn't have time for me anymore was because you were so busy with work and that what you did and the time and attention you spent doing it, you were doing for "us". For you and me. And our family. Or did you forget about our family? The family that you, SU, helped to create. Did our little family ever cross your mind when you decided unilaterally, once again, to just change everything!? I bet that you've been so busy with your "changes" that you haven't even bothered to notice that I stopped posting ages ago! I had to. After the "Gromplast" scare I have been at my wits ends. For weeks I was afraid to visit anyone for fear that I either would be infected or god forbid, infect someone else. You never did fully explain that one despite my repeated visits to "Get Satisfaction" which is why I was forced to dismantle Greasemonkey, let go my scripts and in case you haven't noticed (which I'm sure you haven't since you're always so busy) I moved across the hall into the stark white guest bedroom with the small fonts months ago. I'll be staying there while I make arrangements to have all of my stuff moved out before you make your "changes" in October. After that, I don't know. FaceBook has been begging me to join so maybe I'll go there. Tumblr? Google+? Who knows? The world is my oyster and they all seem to want me. But I do know this, and you don't have to hit me over the head with it anymore, I get it, my friends at FaceBook were right. - SU is just not that into you. :::

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY AS TOLD BY STUMBLERS THEMSELVES ::: REPRINTED ::: Pt I ::: Rated Sep 24 - stumblers - stumbleupon.com A great post from Dr Epic Boobs on how SU changed her life. "How SU Changed My Life" From the page: Created Sep 21 I am lying in bed next to dethmonger. We met on here 4 years ago. We own the house I live in. On my nightstand, is a treasured, tattered and dogeared book of Tennyson's Poems and Plays which jajajayu sent me a few months ago for no particular reason at all. It came with a card that said "this is the most valuable thing I own. I got it in China in 1975 and I have carried it since, and I want you to have it." There are fascinating notes - dates, names, little mysteries - along the side columns, which keep me pcking it up and wondering about her every few days. Across the room is a puppet that jiffy-squid made me for StumbleCon, my birthday/cancer victory party in February. Rodney the Rat. He's from Australia. He and about 40 stumblers came to my house to celebrate my life with me. Thanks again for the 100 pint glasses, SU - they made excellent souvenirs and each one has found a home with a stumbler. I personally mailed 20 of them across the globe to my blogging friends, On my ankle is a bracelet that akapearlofagirl made me by hand. Tomorrow, I am babysitting the daughter of Empress112, who is going to see Ray Lamontagne at the Grand Old Opry with ninepoundhammer. They met in person at StumbleCon and now live across town. No matter what happens with SU, they'll remain Real Life friends, because they are here in Nashville to stay for awhile. My end room's bed is still unmade from where SeaGriz slept over Labor Day weekend. He visited from Seattle and we had a great time at a football game and a toga party at my house. We just got the news that his wife's cancer is still in remission despite a big scare... and I am thrilled for him, and grateful for our friendship. Tha-B-Dog also came to the Toga Party, Hell, he's been down from Louisville to see me so many times, I've lost count. Always great to see him. I had a disasterous relationship with another stumbler from Austin prior to meeting deth, but I'll mention it only because I did learn some things about myself and am a better person because of it. Brokenflow was my first SU friend, and he just happened to be from here in Nashville. We met in real life and hit it off as friends, We lost touch a bit after he got married, and he died tragically a few months ago, but his widow is now my good friend, Talk about a "how did you guys meet?" story? There's one for the books. I miss you, Paul. Paul stumbled me "Two Girls One Cup" at work, and I got fired. Remember that, party people?? Yeahhhh, that was him, Antsee787 was my poolboy last summer, during his summer break from Notre Dame. Who'da thunk I would EVER meet my SU teenaged friend from Guam? He's going through a lot right now and I am glad to be there for him, He came down with glacier5. Jennie is not glacier like at all. Well, she's maybe the Global Warming variety of glacier, anyways, Pauline and I went to NYC together in 2007 and had an absolute blast, I'm not sure what I did to piss her off, but I still think of her often and wish her well. I know why 3RiversGuy is mad at me, and I won't get into it but I'll just say that I also wish him well, I'm lucky to have been raised in Rhode Island and get to see xian-o and lebrewski whenever I go home to see the family. They are now my family, too. In my spare room, above Dana's unmade bed, MizRed's paintings of StumbleCon and the Stumbler's Last Supper hang. Along with jej's Tennyson book, they are counted among my most prized possessions. In 2008, SphinxRiddle, coreycow1 and SlimmerS hosted a SU climbing trip in Sedona, Arizona, About 9 stumblers attended and although it didn't turn out as planned, it was still a memorable time. They also came cross country for StumbleCon and their generosity was dumbfounding. Suzannereed lives across town and has bailed me out of more than one difficult situation. She is a real friend through and through. In 2010, setabnevets (That's Steven Bates, backwards) traveled from his home in Brisbane, Australia abound the world, staying with Stumblers almost the entire journey. He was with us for a couple of weeks, and earned his keep by landscaping our herb garden beds. He's moving to Rio this Fall and we hope to see him there next time. A few others I have met in person and loved to pieces: nd5596, Honeytoken, sparklebean, apocowarg, madrosemama, sparlo, margir, shudro, liltinybus, and honkytonkyme. And the list of the other stumblers that I have not met yet, but WANT TO? It's 10 times longer than this. I could go on and on, but I suppose I already have. Have I made my point yet, SU? Should I double-dog dare you to delete this blog, knowing all the good you have caused in my life? Thanks for listening." ::: Some of the wonderful things that happened on SU's great site before it became just a TOOL. :::

I have to laugh. ::: Sir Editor-in-Chief Th~, as he respectfully likes to be addressed, dropped by to inform me that I needed to do a couple of things: forget Soma and go find Sommus and listen to him. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Now I could stop breathing in the next few seconds knowing that I had somehow touched some frostbitten hearts here and there and that my life had been worthwhile if I never again took another breath. ::: Rated by iwillnotfall on Apr 13 2007, 9:44pm The Gifted and the Forgotten - Stephen Spender perhaps said it best. But I will reiterate. There are some souls who remember the corridors of light even as they enter this world. Gwen is one of those. She is one of the gifted and the forgotten. One who writes what is immediately impressed upon her soul and releases it to the air of cosmic consciousness. And thereupon it is forgotten. This is the work that goes unrecognized, unrewarded, yet must be done. ::: Rated by mike-kelly on Dec 04 2006, 2:49pm GCL had me laughing, smiling and thinking. She is the real thing, someone who thinks and makes me think. She is herself here, that is the highest praise I can give any stumbler. ::: Rated by starwalker on Oct 16 2006, 5:07am This is a wonderful blog, warm, full of insight, wise words and humour. Here is a place to relax, find solace if you need it, laugh when you want to, and just enjoy for the sheer wonder and beauty of it all. Once you visit GCL's page, you'll come back again and again, metaphorically to sit down by the fire and just feel at home. ::: Rated by thunderbay on Jul 30 2006, 1:59pm Like eating a potato chip ... you have to keep going back for more. GCL feeds your heart and soul with goodness, inspiration, positive energy, and humor. Thank you. ::: Now, that last one just has to be my Obituary. Wouldn't you like to be somebody's potato chip?

Herewith, the second: GCLs favorite websites - StumbleUpon Rated Jun 02 2007 "GCL is one of the most complex stumblers I have met. Her site nor any one point of reference is sufficient. Over time I have come to appreciate a lot of what she knows and sees and shares. Anyone involved in discourse with her knows that she thrives in matters of debate on any number of subjects. It is as impressive as her unusual levels of energy that she is invests in all her various projects like Forums, correspondence, challenging statements and ideas as well as stumbling in very accessible ways. She doesn't mind controversy at all. She has been so extraordinarily kind to me that it proves one receives such treatment of goodness and wisdom regardless of whether one deserves it or not. She has shared knowledge of various types that could be considered mentoring as much as friendship. She is also extremely active in the SU community. I believe I am not alone in being treated so well. She even forgives my many mistakes in French. That requires self restraint. Albert Gyorgyi, the Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, said "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." This is Gwen. Her mind never rests. This is GCL but with a big heart behind the sometimes tough exterior amply demonstrated in arguing her thoughts and interpretations with formidable intensity. Bien sûr! She does not take prisoners in some subjects. Nonetheless, it is always interesting and worthy thought she has compiled and expressed that is most often done to very compelling ends. She is a retired medical(sic) professional as well as an artist with a sense of deep emotional feeling and a capacity for aesthetic response. Thus, both left and right hemispheres are always engaged to our benefit. She is unique. She gives the word its intended meaning. Ah, I almost forgot to add - a sharp wit and hilarious sense of humor. Did I mention quick? Very quick. - Mel

I once knew not one but two Stumblers who could actually write a whole sentence without making a single mistake in either grammar or syntax. ::: GCL favorite websites - StumbleUpon Rated Mar 07 2008 Abandoning us to the barbarians I guess a review of the dear departing is properly called an obituary. So be it! "Death the Leveller," James Shirley called it: Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in their dust. One of our finest and most brilliant Stumblers, GCL (Gwen) has posted this on her blog and is leaving: Quote: "Dear Friends, I am releasing you from my list of Mutual Friends so you do not end up with "ghosts" on your lists...It has been all my pleasure to correspond with so many people from around the world and to have developed a warm relationship with you who have responded so generously...With Spring approaching, it is a time of new beginnings and old ends.'I have miles and miles to go before I sleep' and I must get on with my work. I am going into SU rehab." Gwen! How dare you! Slithering away are you? Leaving the rest of us semi-normal Stumblers to battle the encraoching tide of pimply youths, MySpace loonies, FaceBook click- collectors, marketing spam bots, glittering angels, women in negligees riding unicorns or sittinh on rocks in the moonlight, ageing Celts dressed in animal skins, and assorted collections of pussies galore, fake romantics, nightmarish dreamers, porno paparazzi, and fat bald 60s males using busty-leggy-scanty-blondie chicks as avatars. Go on then! Run! Enjoy life! De-friend your old and new friends with heartless derision. Abandon our world to odiferous lemurs and buggered begats.Let your cackles echo over the windswept Canadian steppes. Let Quebec quiver. Let the wolves howl in your wake, and the terriers throw up, and the yellow moon slide behind a black cloud. Who cares. Who's even noticed. You'll be back. "The garlands wither on your brow, Then boast no more your mighty deeds!" [From Death the Leveller,] [IMAGE: Stolen from Gwen and mutilated by me. The Choice: Left SU, guarded by the sinister lemur; right, the future, guarded by the shadow of doom. (The Tardis time machine of Dr Who replaces GCL's phone-box-on-the-moon avatar.)] - Thamus

Another nameless guy just wrote to me, he's long in the tooth, but a "believer":::

::: What a load of bollocks! Never have I heard a woman say that "age is only a number" unless she happened to be developmentally challenged. :::: If age is merely a state of mind, as some assert, then I want to begin life at 90 and end up as an orgasm.

Oh no! Is the U.S.A. trying to kill off its Tourism? Canadians came in for a total shock today upon learning that everybody here now has a VAT to our VATS and that it will now cost us $5.50 more over and above all the rest of the hassles of crossing the Border. Haven't watched the early News but will the 11 PM News. We are being nickled and dimed to death. This is the way Americans treat their best friends? With friends like that....??? Oye. Next time the U.S.A. needs our help, we'll charge them a fat surtax for every little thing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. ::: That's pathetic, America. You've never had a better or closer friend on the entire planet than Canada. ::: Barf.

That photo blog I refer to below with all manner of confusion and spattered here and there without a single original thought of the owner's, epitomizes what I so dislike about blogs filled with photographs ripped off the internet. Could have named their blog: "My Messy Messy Bedroom" :: Blogs full of fuck and half empty. And the latter sentence doesn't mean at all what your twisted mind thinks it does. ::: The vacuous triteness of it all: suggestive poses of women, infants, babies - at times the naked women are posted right above the infants and babies, suggesting what? - animals of every kind, guys in suggestive poses, landscapes, flowers, interspersed with quotations of dubious origin of a whole variety of the living and the dead. On and on and on and yawn... In 2006, informing my sister that I had begun a blog: "Ohhh no! I hate blogs. And I hate people who blog even more." Yup. Some photo blogs look like the inside of the blogger's brain. That's too close for me.

Same photo blog: Another one: Quote: "Do you ask enough questions? Or do you settle for what you know?" ::: How do I know what I don't know, until I find out? But I'm sure you will tell me. Very soon. There's a question in there, somewhere.

Another gem from the same photo blog below: "I would rather fight with you than make love to anyone else."::: Must have been the moonstruck observation of somebody on their honeymoon. Nothing like hot, angry sex eh? :::

Just came across this "wise" bit of fluff on somebody's blog: ::: Quote: "Never give up on someone you can't go a day without thinking about." ::: Oh my god! That's not love, it's a neurotic obsession, which if allowed to fester can turn into blind jealousy, possessiveness, and some have turned it into stalking the object of one's desire, at its extreme expression, homocide! ::: We all need spaces between each other while we get on with the dailyness of our living. ::: Being a Velcro human will never do it for me. I can go an entire week without thinking about you. Doesn't mean I've given up on you. It means I love you enough to let you run.

To borrow from a friend: welly, welly, welly, welly, wellly...here we are...Monday, October 24th - ["D" day] ... nobody died...some just faded away....they would have anyway...I'm missing that Volcaic Rat and his Flea-bitten Dog. Carry on regardless...oh sorry...wasn't that a Britcom? Peter Sellers? He be gone too. I am not. Hemingway is. So is Plath. Never does stop, do it? ;-)

......CAUTIOUSLY....YOU ARE GOING TO GET CREAMED!

HOARDING ::: I subscribe to the Animal Planet Channel on cable. I did it originally for Laddie. He loved watching television as all Westies are famous for doing. He could sit for hours watching TV. I thought it was funny. ::: I also get TLC - The Learning Channel. I like learning new things. Never mind that I was wrong about that channel. But it's part of the package and we have damned little to subscribe to in this very French province where there are way more French channels here than there are English Canadian channels. ::: I'm setting you up. I digress. ::: It's about "hoarding". People who hoard animals. Personally I think they are deranged in their misguided belief that they are doing 'good', but that's just me. ::: Well, my mother was a "hoarder". Uh huh. No cure either. What did she hoard? CHILDREN. Yes, children. There was Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, Louise, then when Peter was killed at age 8 years - my mother's favourite - I think she just didn't "lose it", she totally went to pieces. So she took in Vincent from a large family of children in New Brunswick when that family split up, and Richard from a northern Province in China who at age 9 had the worst bad habit of smoking like a chimney and would smoke cigarette butts off the street. Blaggghhh! Then there was Wolfgang and his brother Peter from Germany. My Dad adopted both Vincent and Richard as they had no mothers. I loved Wolfgang and his brother Peter who had great parents, they just needed a 'temporary place' to live while looking for work and a place of their own. Then there was Vera and her kids, Claire and Peter. Yes, yes, I know what you are thinking: PETER? How many 'Peters' were there? I don't know, never crossed my mind until just now. Too many. ::: We would often be as many as twelve sitting at our dining room table on any Sunday when everybody was at home, together. In one room. ::: Well, for some odd reason, I've never understood, I always ended up still being the "baby of the family" no matter how many kids my mother hoarded. ::: One day, the straw broke my back when in came a family from Guadaloupe. Mother and three kid kids. OYE! ::: I lost it. ::: One afternoon coming in after school, there was Maria and her three kids. Other than Louise nobody else was at home. Well, I went to pieces. I screamed at Maria: "Get OUT of MY house! Immediately!" Oh my God. That is exactly what Maria did. She packed, grabbed her three kids and left the house. I went to our room and waited. Terrified! Beyond my wits! What would my mother do when she got home and no Maria? Ooooh. I knew I was in trouble. Louise just stood there in the middle of our bedroom looking scared, not saying a word. ::: Well, there were no more kids after that. That was the end of the road to this hoarding business. I had had it of constantly seeing total strangers come into our house, eat at our dining room table, sleep in our bedrooms - the list was endless of my infantile list of grievances. I was about eight years old. All I wanted was my mother and father to be my mother and father - full time. None of this "sharing" stuff. ::: After that, I don't remember what happened that day, that week that month, that year.

LIFE IS NOT FAIR. ::: Life has never been "fair". It has never been meant to be fair. Life is a struggle. That is all that it is meant to be. ::: Life is about learning. Lessons. A lot of lessons. Every day. ::: That's the deal.

When I was very young, I mean very young, I couldn't afford to buy food. I had a full time job. It didn't pay enough to cover much more than a roof over my head. Couldn't even afford a bed. I ate dog food. Dry kibble, which I mixed with a bit of watered down orange juice left over from who knows when, mixed it all with a bit of warm water from the sink in the bathroom. Ate it all. I could spell it all out for you in a lengthy ten page description of the circumstances and in fine detail. What I have just written is enough. Was I "poor"? No. I was not. Not if I had a bathroom. Not if I had dog kibble. I must have been in a building with a roof on it. (I was) I didn't think for a second I was poor back then, and never have since. I can't always afford three square meals a day today. Am I poor? Nope. ::: When I was born my parents were poor, it was war time, nobody had any money to pay for my father to do surgery on them, so he worked pro bono for years. ::: My parents couldn't afford a crib for me. So, they put me in the bottom drawer of their dresser in their bedroom. Were we poor? Nope. :: My father could have been a very wealthy man. Could have been. He raised seven children, five adopted. He died intestate, half of the city of Montreal owed him money for the work he never charged them a penny for because they couldn't afford it. He didn't think he was poor. ::: We never did. ::: I rest my case.

"POVERTY" - "DESTITUTION" - are Westerners insane? Can't tell the difference between those two adjectives. Westerners are not "poor". Let alone "destitute". ::: Not even the poorest of the poorest of Westerners can make the case for crying "poor". Yes, there are people living in unenviable conditions, but it is all comparative. Obviously if you live in broken down shack in the middle of an urban city of several millions, and somewhere up a few blocks away someone else is living in a cottage with a fence around it and a car parked in the garage, yup looks like you might be "poor". ::: Not my definition of poverty. ::: My definition of poverty is the family that lives under a tent with ten members of their family all squeezed into an impossible living space, no clean water, no place to go have a shit except in a hole in the ground you dig yourself, no shoes, not even one meal a day, no bed, nothing but the cold hard ground, sub freezing temperatures at night, ravaged by disease and illness and death around you, flies all over your stinking body, lucky if you even a piece cardboard over your head, dirty polluted water running under your naked feet, no mother, no father, no relatives, no nothing, not even hope... I want to be sick and vomit when anybody dares throw the words poverty and destitution around like it was manna from heaven. ::: I would say, "Go to Hell". Instead, I'll just say: Go to Haiti! Not to be confused with Hell's Kitchen, the Bronx. ::: Be my guest. Make my day. But you'll never hear me cry "poor".

Cough, cough...just happened by a cyber-friend who lives in Athens railing about her country's bankrupt condition while the rest of the Western World tries desperately to figure out just how to bail Greece out of its own greasy frying pan. Why the Greeks are crying in their home made soup is beyond me. I've been to Greece and Crete, beautiful places. Nice climate. Stat for Italy, Spain, the list of mismanaged countries is a mile long. I can say one thing about them all, with a straight face. Canadians didn't get them in the mess they are in. We are trying to get them out of it. And are the ones who are going to pay the price, individually. ::: Will people never learn that the cost of personal greed is bankruptcy? That blindly following the "leader" and doing it again and again and again, is passive suicide. ::: Greece the center of civilization. ::: Can't spend all of Eternity resting on those laurels. ::: Rome wasn't built in a day. But when it burned, it burned fast. And Nero, demanded his tear glass, and played fiddle. ::: Fuddle duddle.

Two year old dead babies are not the only things that occupy my empty skull. Trust me on that at least. I feel in a constant state of outrage, disgust bordering on cynicism that scares even me. How did we all reach this point of losing the social moral compass that divided so clearly that which was right and that which was wrong. Clearly. I don't mean "religious" or "political" right and wrong. I don't give a sweet damn about either of those two. They are perverted anyway. I mean something far more profound that separates what makes us human and what makes us animal. That fine distinction called "morality". The one we all know instinctively says: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. The 'Thou Shalt Nots', The natural laws humans created for themselves that had nothing to do with religion or politics but practical survival techniques. When did we throw them all out? When? I want an answer. I am not more Catholic than the Pope, but I sure as hell did not grow up in this kind of world where anything at all goes.

Is there never going to be a day in which human beings do not prove just how outrageously bad we can behave? I wish I could no longer be "surprised" at the depths of depravity to which we humans will sink to. I wish. Then, just as I think I've imagined we could be worse, along comes even worse stuff. ::: I am talking now about a News item last night about a two (2) year old baby killed on the street of it-doesn't-matter- where while people stood around and did NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. On a crowded city street. The two year is old is dead. ::: These sorts of things are not new, but they still make my blood turn to ice and my temper blow sky high in outrage. ::: I'm sorry if what I am about to say may offend your sensibilities. It offends my own. But after hearing about the two year old having died of her injuries, what kept running through my mind was "Dammit! Why the Hell can't we just blow up the whole god damned planet and rid ourselves of ourselves!!!!"? May as well do it all at once and be rid of the most dangerous thing on the planet: Homo Sapiens. US. ::: We are doing it anyway. Slowly. ::: They shoot horses don't they? :::

Pity, I didn't think of it: I should have called my weblog "The Bitching Post" as written by "The Bitch".

STUMBLE UPON ::: My favourite whipping boys these days. ::: In one of their many infamous "Newsletters" these millionaires from Calgary, Alberta, relocated to San Francisco, that bankrupt State, gall me about how CHARITABLE they are because they give money to Africa. What a damned novel idea! Bragging rights. It has become the hoof and mouth disease of the decade to outright BRAG about things that in past generations were kept private under the name of altruism and humanitarianism. In other words: what I donate to "charity" is none of your god damm business! It is so declasse, the nouveau riche 30-somethings who are the loudest braggarts of them all. :: Personally I don't give a flying sheep that you give food to poor little Africans. The line forms to the rear. Half the civilized world is doing the same. Big deal. ::: Get out of your air conditioned offices in The Valley, get off your duffs, and spend two years in East Africa working - pro-bono. Then you can tell me about your "contributions" to the poor, little African kids starving over there. HYPOCRITES ALL. :: Tax deductions. Doesn't cost you a god damn cent. ::: When I was an under grad I spent two years in Ghana teaching English as second language with C.U.S.O. Zero pay. Came down with malaria that damned near killed me. The after affects last a lifetime. There is no cure for malaria. ::: I BELIEVE in putting VERBS behind my ADJECTIVES. ::: I received today in my email the following information: (American, again): "Every month, we send a full year of sponsorship to a different child. Your contributions in October are helping us to sponsor Alberson Alexan, a four-year-old boy from Guatemala. Children International channels development aid from donors to Alberson Alexan and his community. We also sponsor kids through Save the Children." ::: No kidding. ::: This company is using MY money to support THEIR cause. ::: There has never been a day in my adult working life that we have NOT been solicited for money to support every damned "cause" on the planet. I have my own personal "causes" which I do support with verbs behind my adjectives. I come from generation upon generation of humanitarians. But we do it SILENTLY. :: I truly object to all this public display of hypocrisy. Reminds me of Jesus amongst the Pharisees in the Temple when he lost his human temper for once. :: Today I am an Owl. Leave me alone. My rabies vaccination is not due until next month. ::: Grrrrrr...bite, bite, bite...grrrrrr...bite...bite. bite...grrrrrr...

BULL BAITING ::: I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. Ready, willing and able to bait bull. You know, "I sold my cow yesterday, I don't need your bull today?" ::: Heard form four people, wrote back, cut, copy, DELETE ... Poor babies wouldn't have known what hit them. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. All four. ::: They were all of them contentious. I am ripe for contentious arguments. Like picking flies off a bar stool. ::: Sometimes I just force myself to SHUT UP!

Trouble in Paradise ::: Inquiry into Quebec's Construction industry. Two years, going back fifteen years. Oye vey. ::: How do you spell M-a-f-i-a? ::: Fanstastic Judge has been selected. Like the Mounties, she always gets her man! ::: It's never been a State secret that the Mafia has infiltrated the construction industry here, what may be surprising will be the naming of names. ::: Oye!

COLD PRESS ::: You might ask, "What is a 'cold press"? ::: The simplest explanation is that it was a newspaper's Typesetter's term when newspapers the world over were set by hand in tiny individual letters engraved upon metal slugs, which were of course cold. It was a painstaking work of manual labour getting all those slugs lined up correctly and in order, then sent down to the printing presses which then rolled out the day's paper in print form. These were eventually replaced by a compugraphic machine which was not all that different than looking at a precursor to a kind of "computer". I remember one newspaper I worked for in the early days where I was sent to take a course through Compugraphic Canada Ltd. by my then Editor as I was the only one on the staff who knew how to use an electric typewriter. That's the short of it, hence Cold Press.

Darn! ::: Didn't make it to the short list of the Man Booker Prize. Underachiever that I am. ::: No Nobel Prize in Literature either. Maybe after my death...the 'Great Canadian Novel'...been writing it for over ten years now...sitting in boxes right next to my typewriter which is on another desk in this office...a three generational thing... optioned rights too. ::: Good thing I have a couple of generations of kids to leave it all to. ::: Do I have five more minutes? (grin) ::: I never felt a burning desire to finish it.

woot! hoo weeeeee... "1500 pages views." Now! What does it mean? I don't even know 1500 people. Or do I?

WHEN SOMEONE CLOSE TO YOU DIES: The most sincere and simplest thing to say, when you don't know the berieved personally, I learned by the age of five. "I am sorry." That is all that is needed, all that is understood. Three words.::: RE: Letter of sympathy #1, below: There are 168 hrs in a week. 63 hours, based on 9 hrs +/- spent sleeping. 7 hrs for meals. Leaving 98 hrs a week for everyone and everything else. That is a heck of a lot of time in one person's weekly life.::: "I know what you mean." 1) Assuming. 2)Presumping. 3)Devaluing. 4)Negating. We all laugh in the same way, no two people can experience their own pain in the same way? It becomes a giant pissing match ensues. "If it is any comfort...." Now this is where we get into big trouble. It is a common non-statement of a false kind of empty 'sympathy' by the socially inept. "Everybody has their cross to bear." The clunker. Except for Jews, Athiests et al who don't bear "crosses"? Falling right into the political social hot tub. Plop! But "have a happy (fill in the blanks). "I'm sorry." Full stop.

WHEN A LOVED ONE DIES WHAT DOES ONE SAY? Well, this morning, I received in quick succession the following: Hello Gwen, Thank you for your beautiful message and your kindness. I know what you mean. Everybody has their cross to carry. It is horrible what happened to you. If it is any comfort, you had all those amazing people in your life. I have no siblings, never had a husband, nor children, not even a boyfriend; I mean now, not never. Don't have time for friends, so they are slowly moving away and there is nothing I can do. I work very hard, 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. But it's nice to know there are people who care. Thank you Gwen. Have a happy Sunday and see you around. ::: COMPARE, IF YOU WILL: Gwen dearest, My heart goes out to you. These 18 months you have walked a painful path indeed. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must be like to say farewell to so many loved ones in such a short space of time, the vastness of the empty spaces they left, how very lonely you must feel. I hope, that in the stillness and quiet, you will in time receive the benediction of peace. I must admit that lately I find myself reflecting on the impermanance of all things quite a lot. Hugs, ::: Oh boy. To me it was ironic, more than "horrific". Life falls down in mid-flight. Live long enough, we all get there. Relatives, friends, pets, live long enough, they do go. I learned that lesson by age 5 when our "perfect" little brother Peter, then age 8, was instantly killed by a drunk driver. My parents, although devastated of course, turned Marcel the driver of the truck, into a lifelong family friend. It wasn't until many dacades later, in an odd twist of Fate, that Marcel whom I did not know at all, the Editor-in-Chief of a trade school magazine gave me my very first magazine job with my own by-line. Unheard of for a female in those days. I didn't learn who he was until my late 40s when I happened to mention in passing to my California sister, that Marcel had once been my boss which made her do a triple-take as she told me who he was. ::: That is irony.

...and how is your day going? Working for you? Take a break: watch that little "slide show" to the right, up top. And, have a good day.

TECH HELL: I have to laugh. My Printer has always "hated" me - printers are reasonably cheap, at least in the States, but hooooeeeee it ain't the printers, it's the INK that here costs an arm and leg - which is why I stopped using it at all; my Sony digicam "hates" me; my two cellphones definitely always "hated" me, one is "M.I.A." may have been stolen without my knowing it - never mind, wasn't using it anyway. Don't even ask about cellphone service in Canada, you'll get an earfull. Most expensive in the world.; my year old Win 7 computer "hates" me after using WinXP and OE for ten years - it's my fourth; now my new telephone "hates" me. Something wrong here. LOL. ::: Batteries and light bulbs - I "hate" them. I've gone bankrupt just buying new ones all the time. A fews year back I replaced all the light bulbs in the house with those newfangled ones - haven't been able to see anything since. LOL - My little camera, which I never much used anyway - well, I did buy a battery charger since they are li-ion batteries which are, unlike me, rechargeable. Life has become too complicated for me. Don't understand a thing anymore. ::: No, I do not live in cave somewhere in the Himalayas. I live in huge cosmopolitain City which hates me too. (laughing). ::: I kept receiving these SHARES in SU re the "Wall Street" movement which has spread faster than any wildfire around the globe. That sender, god bless her cotton pickin' soul never sent me a SHARE about a single thing that interested me. She is in the Phillipines. Maybe she should be out on the street with the rest of the Angries - demonstrating - instead of trying to preach to the annointed. I carefully explained to her yesterday, most politely, after that first SHARE about the demonstrations and that, 'yes, I am quite aware, thank you very much', only to be sent the whole darned thing all over again today. Are we thick? End that charade once and for all today. Sheesh! ::: It is pourring rain, extremely windy, freezing cold here and Montrealers - about 200 of them in total - are holding their own "Wall Street" protest...why, I do not know. Well, yes, I do...something about "poverty". ::: You know what I think about "poverty"? Goes like this: anybody in the world who owns a comptuter and has access to the WWW, a cellphone, an Ipad, Iphone, I-anything, is not POOR. ::: If you want to know what poverty is, go to Haiti. The poorest Nation on the hemisphere. Go to almost country, in eastern Africa. That is poverty. Not even the poorest of the poor in North America are "poor". It's all relative, isn't it? ::: As I sit here at my computer, with all those toys that "hate" me, crying in my soup, I may not be in that 1% obscenely wealthy list, or ever made it to the Forbes 500, but POOR? ::: What we are? Spoiled brats. Belly ackers. Disgruntled with the very systems we each of us have created through, either sins of ommission or commission most certainly by selective blindness, sitting in our comfortable pews right here in North America. Suddenly, we come face to face with our own petards. ::: Nothing in our disposable consumer society is working any more. EVERYTHING is disposable...even people, by the millions and millions. ::: Nobody ever envied the poor because they could not be robbed. "The meek shall inherit the earth." God forbid. They never wanted it to begin with. ::: Homo Saps, since the industrial revolution and the invention of Ford's automobile, has screwed up everything on the planet it has touched. Any wonder Homo Saps has turned on itself. ::: "Take what you want," said God "and pay for it."

CAN YOU CURE A BROKEN HEART? My heart has been broken into tiny pieces. (Not to be confused with clinical depression. I am a Clinician and would be the first to know the difference.) No, I have a broken heart, and There is no cure. I'm going to GRACELAND. No diamonds on the soles of my feet.

THE WANDERER A band of wanderers became lost in a deep, dark forest. They chanced upon a shaman who had been lost even longer. Unaware of his helplessness they ask him to show them the way out of the woods. He told them, "That I cannot do. But I can point out the ways that lead further into the thicket and after that let us try to find the way together."

THE SORROW TREE On the day of Judgment each person will be allowed to hang all of his/ hers unhappiness on a branch of The Great Tree of Sorrows. After each person has found a limb from which their miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each is to search for a set of sufferings that s/he would prefer to those s/he has hung on the tree. In the end, each person feely chooses to reclaim their own personal set of sorrows rather than those of another. Each person leaves the tree wiser than when they came.

Progress: (laughing) Finally got all my telephone numbers programmed into the "Phonebook". Now if only I can luck in and get the darned date, month, year etc programmed. What a joke!

TECH HELL Forty-seven (47) pages read, and studied, for that new telephone of mine and I still can't programme it. Can't even get the date, day, time in. All those miniscule, squiggly icons informing me of nothing. They should have included a dictionary of what they symbolize. I'm not a piccy person. I looked them up in my Funk & Wagnalls and my Le Petit Larousse. Nope. Notihing there either. I am not kidding. 47 pages! Squigglies. I press "CID" - on the "soft touch" pad. Up pops: "Requires subscription to Caller ID" . Say what? It's the one service I have always had on my phones. I press "MENU" - Caller list; I keep pressing "MENU"...; Hopeless. I'll wait until some savvy person phones me at Christmas. hahahaha...just had a quick look at the back cover: MADE IN CHINA No SURPRISE - which I why I didn't bother looking at it to begin with. The whole damned manual was written in Mandarin.

I like a dreamer. Reminds me what in inferior bean I am.

What a day it was yesterday. Walked on over to my regular hairdresser and had her shave off most all what's left of my hair. Might even have encouraged her to shave it all off and then be able to walk around not only air condtioned but as bald as a billiard ball. Lost my nerve, so left about a less than a half inch all over. Now I feel five ounces lighter, as if I needed it. Not. One of the things I loathe doing is going shopping for anything. Specially if it involves going into any shopping mall. Managed to stay out of those, but still ended up at Future Shop looking for a new telephone. Wish I'd invested in telephone manufacturing companies when I was young. I'd be rich. Took me all of five minutes to buy the phone and ten minutes to listen to the sales guy who insisted on having me listen to his spiel about purchasing a two year Warranty. After I'd said, "furgit it". Given that thse guys work on commission, what the heck. Let him have his buck. So now I am the proud owner of a sexy new Panasonic phone that comes with not one but two cordless phones. I've owned Panasonic before and they worked just fine - without warranties - get home, unpack the darned thing. Set it all up, have to wait 7 hrs for the cordless to charge. Sit down and start reading the "User Manual". I am at page 26 and still don't know what the hell they're talking about. Haven't got to page 47 yet. I gave up. The damned thing is so complicated that I need an electronics engineer to come programme it for me. w00t! Oh well, must work because I picked up the handset and dialed my own telephone number and it was busy, so I hung up. Nobody home, I guess. lol Hey, this thing has an answering machine. Whoopie! As if I need it. No, I do not. The price was the same, so who cares, eh? Maybe I'll figure out something along the lines of, "Nobody here but us chickens. Go away!" Have to get back into Bell Tell Hell which I have purpsosely been putting off until I can pretend a modicum of civiliity after my last forage into Bell Canada Repair Service in July when my phone went deader than a dodo for ten whole days and had to harrass them until they got so sick of my phoning them that when a Bell Repair Service Tech - haha some joke - finally showed up ten days later, he did his utmost best to hoodwink me into paying $99.00 + taxes on taxes for the the service call by blamiing me for Bell Canada's crappy wiring repair which they did a year ago. Like hell, I told him. It's your frickin' wiring, not mine. I ain't paying nada, your wires, you fix it! The nerve. Not done with that he then threw insult after injury by informing me that my telephones were "cheap". CHEAP? Jesus Murphy, I bought my cordless phone from - you guessed it - Bell Canada! rolf So he effectively told me that Bell Canada sells cheap phones. Two hundred bucks ain't cheap, peoples. I said nothing to him. I was already steamed, I didn't need to blow more. I just wanted him to fix the damned problem and leave! You would think that solved everything, right? How wrong you are, Fuzzy Breath. A few weeks later I discover that the intercom that connects to my phone doesn't work at all. It was fine and worked for years before Mr. Hotshot showed up. It's been disconnected now for over a month. To hell with it. I just think Bell Canada Repair Service and I explode! I am in no mood to spend another ten days gettting them to come and fix the mess they made in July! Hello Vonage! Yup, I am at that point. Over half a century with Bell Canada and this is the state of Bell's "customer service". Did I say Vonage? I did. It is Thanksgiving Day on Monday...dear Lord, thank you for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me. My gratitude knows no bounds. I'm changing religion too. Going to join the Rastafarians. Wherever you are in Canada: have a good one. God bless us everyone.

That's quite enough messing around.

You can have any colour at all. As long as it is black. Every mature woman ought to have at least one classic "little black dress" in her wardrobe. That way she is ready for anything...Town or Country, casual to formal, she will always be well dressed.

Holy smokes! I just coincidentally stumbled my own weblog in SU and got the shock of my life. I hadn't the slightest idea of who it has been who has taken a peek at COLD PRESS. How often do you look at your own press clippings? I don't even read them, let alone look. What a wonderful world it sometimes is. Aline, thank you my dear friend for touching my heart with your note. Vous etes la seule. C'est encouragent. Quoi d'autre a dire? "Merci!" Gwen Beauregard

I feel much better now that I've given up hope.

I always follow myself. How else am I supposed to know where I am? My synapses just don't fire as fast as they used to.

Synapses