I was out for trick or treat this evening. A fun time was had by all, with many scares, many spooks, and about 45 kilos of candy per child.

Each year seems to have it’s own themes for costumes, and this year among the older kids it seems to be hippies. Brightly coloured wigs, tie die, and all manner of bell bottomed and flowing clothing, love beads, and jewelry… what a sight.

Trouble is, although I’m too young to have been a hippie, I am old enough to remember them. Even in documentaries from the period, or the old chestnut Woodstock, hippies were dingy, dirty, unkempt, and generally not too colorful or charming. There was a reason why town council in Kelowna tried to get them tossed out of City Park.

Now, I have an admission to make.

I don’t like The Band. For those who are really too young, The Band was one of the icons of the sixties – well, actually the Seventies, which is when most of the Sixties took place anyhow. I actually heard The Band referred to this week on CBC as the greatest band ever.

For the life of me I can’t understand why.

Musically, well, I have never found them really inspiring. Maybe it’s just me, but bands for whom the drummer is also the lead singer never seem terribly musical.

Instrumentally I haven’t heard much that thrilled me. I can overlook a lot if there are a couple of hot players that can lift the music to a higher plane. I haven’t heard anything from The Band that made me sit up and listen.

Lyrically, well let’s look at it.

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don’t have to speak she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one

Truly, one of the less evocative lyrics ever written, set to a tune that, well, was made for AM radio of that era, and which has been played to death subsequently.

And this, from the rather pretentiously named “The Weight”:

I pulled into Nazareth, I was feelin’ about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
“Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?”
He just grinned and shook my hand, and “No!”, was all he said.

Wow, that’s almost like a biblical reference or something! Then comes the chorus…

Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free;
Take a load off Fanny, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on
me.

Whoa, stop, think about that.

“Take a load off Fanny”

Wow.

Now I’ll admit to liking their collaborations with Bob Dylan for “The Basement Tapes“, but I have to conclude that the good stuff was Dylan’s not The Band’s.

And even though many people see Martin Scorcese as a God among mere mortal film makers, I will state flatly that “The Last Waltz” is dreary and lifeless mess. I have tried to watch that thing three times, and each time have given up one third through.

Heck, I liked Woodstock better, and certainly “The Last Waltz” doesn’t hold a candle compared to the sheer exuberance and musical brilliance of “Standing in the Shadows of Motown“, or even last years “Festival Express“. Those films were fun!

All in all I just can’t understand why anyone would give The Band the time of day.

Note: don’t even get me started on the Grateful Dead! Or Ron Sexsmith.

Ah yes, the latest from the Church of Mac…. at http://devoted1.com/.

“Inspired by the world’s obsession and devotion to the iPod, IBelieve is a replacement lanyard for your iPod Shuffle. It is a social commentary on the fastest growing religion in the world.”

Rejoice! Only $12.95 each!

I Love Kentucky, truly I do, but stories like this just keep coming….

From the Lexington Herald Leader…

FRANKFORT State officials have won a $36,300 federal homeland security grant to keep terrorists out of Kentucky bingo halls, although not everyone agrees that’s much of a threat.

“It’s almost ludicrous,” said Rick Bentley, a Henry Clay High School sports booster as he volunteered last Thursday at a noisy, smoke-filled Lexington bingo parlor. “The thought would never even enter my mind.”

The state Office of Charitable Gaming, which regulates more than 1,300 organizations that are licensed to raise money through gambling, says it will use the grant to guarantee that money from bingo and pull-tab games does not fund terrorism.

John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming, who applied for the grant:

“But the potential there, to me, is just huge. You can earn a lot of money very fast and deal entirely in cash,” Holiday said. “I actually went on the Web and did a lot of research about this. There are articles that have linked terrorism to charitable gaming.”

I’m reassured already…..

No, really, I don’t try to hunt these things down.  I installed Flock today, a new browser based of course on Mozilla Firefox. It’s very cool and very simple, and builds in support for del.icio.us  (the great web-based bookmark manager that is so much better than “Favorites”) and also has built tools that make it far too easy to add to my  WordPress blog.

Anyhow, almost the first time that I logged into del.icio.us I saw the link for a site promising:

Japanese Sound effects and what they mean.

And that’s just what this page offers. At least a few hundred of them

mero mero = limp, floppy (see also hero, pura, puran)
meso meso = whimper, sniffle
miii = cry, wail (see also e, hu-e)
gacha, gachari = the click of something opening, such as a latch, a door, or even a belt (see also kacha)
gahaha = evil laugh, same as bwahaha, fwahaha, gwahaha
gakin = clash
mu, musu, mumuu, muun = grimace, anger, sulkiness. It’s been suggested that the sound of ‘mu’ is a sort of closed-mouth grunt–perhaps similar to the sound of disapproval Marge Simpson makes?

Check it out.

The Opinionated Lesbian reports that:

An American “study on the TV habits of gays and lesbians revealed Monday they like ‘South Park’ just as much as ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.’ ‘South Park,’ which routinely pokes fun at the gay population, was the second most popular TV show behind ‘Queer Eye,’ with about 25 percent of gays saying they watched it in the past month, compared to 8 percent of the total population.”

Stop. Think about that for a minute.

25% of the gay population watches South Park.

Doesn’t that shake up your image of the gay community just a little bit?

What would you say if your boss told you that you had to do two and half hours of extra work each night, unpaid, on top of your regular nine to five job?

I know that my reaction would be to quote the late great Johnny Paycheck.

That’s fine for us wage slaves, who can always walk away from the job and find another, but what if you were in Grade Five?

A friend of mine is in that situation. Her mandated daily homework includes:

40 minutes of reading in French
10 minutes of reading in English
15 minutes of French vocabulary drills
15 minutes of English vocabulary drills
40 minutes of math homework.

That’s 120 minutes, or two hours each weeknight. Plus work on a bi-weekly public speaking exercize based on a book of her choice, work on a public speaking exercize on weather for science class, and studying for tests.

Her sister, in Grade Two, also is mandated to do reading and vocabulary in French and English, plus prep for her own public speaking assignments.

When did Grade Twos start being assigned homework? That’s seven years old!

Of course on top of all of this both girls are doing after school dance and music lessons, plus Girl Guides – those fill in for the arts education that was all but eliminated during the Mike Harris neo-conservative years.

Is it any wonder that ten year olds these days have a haggard appearance and seem to be perpetually tired?

All of the homework is cutting into their sleep time.

Since the first installment it appears that our house is sold once again. For some $3,000 below that last selling price.

Has the market changed? No. Has the house changed? No. Has the neighborhood changed? No.

So what has?

The agent.

Advertisements for real estate companies emphasize how much they’ll support you, how they’ll work to get you the best possible price, and what an easy and dreamlike experience your house sale will be.

Copy from one large firm reads:

Your agent is a trained professional who knows all aspects of the real estate market. An agent will save you time, money and aggravation.

…you want to list with the agent who is the expert in your location. After all, potential purchasers will be calling this “area expert” to inquire about houses for sale. There will be a few of them who are knowledgeable about your neighborhood. Call them up and interview your potential agent. You need to feel comfortable with him or her, after all, they will be working for you. “

They will be working for you…..

“Know what to expect and take stress out of the transaction by getting some insight here. When it comes to bargaining and persuasion your agent is one of the top in this field.”

“By knowing your parameters, your agent can work with the potential purchaser’s agent to create an offer that will be acceptable to you. After all, it comes down to bargaining and persuasion, and your agent is one of the top in this field. “

The reality can be quite different. Rather than working for you, most agents are working to get their commission – usually something like 5% of the selling price – as fast as possible.

There are agents in Hamilton who are notorious for encouraging homeowners to set a low asking price, not because that’s the best price that the house could be sold at, but because that’s the price that will allow them to sell it as fast as possible.

Until the market trended upward a couple years ago there was one agent in Hamilton who listed every house at $99,900. Neighborhood, condition, none of this mattered. He knew that at $99,900 the house could sell fast and he would pocket the commission with a minimum of work. No matter that some of those houses could have sold for more than $100,000.

Most agents aren’t quite so obvious, but the goal remains the same: sell it fast, even if it means selling it at a lower price. Get the deal signed quickly and move on to the next one.

If a house sells fast that’s fine. Everyone walks away happy.

If though there are difficulties things fall apart quickly.

What if the agent brings you an offer that isn’t acceptable? Ideally the agent will go back out, develop some new leads, and come back with something better.

What actually happens is that the agent will often try to bully the seller into accepting a lesser offer. If the seller refuses then the agent, previously your best friend in the whole world, will suddenly begin to view you as hostile, unwilling to compromise, and you’ll suddenly find yourself dropping to the bottom of his or her priority list. The agent who could deliver three offers in three days suddenly won’t be able to find anyone who is even interested in viewing the house.

The longer this happens, the less effort the agent will invest. By the time a couple of weeks have passed he or she will have convinced themselves that the house is unsellable.

Our house sold with an unconditional offer. That means that the seller places no conditions on the sale. It’s a done deal.

In what was perhaps our first mistake we allowed the agent to represent both the seller and buyer. I’m sure that there are people who could handle such a conflict well, but our agent was not one of them.

Several days before the sale was to close the buyer began making demands, that we rewire part of the house, that we move the fence, that we solve a property dispute that existed only in his mind.

We discussed all of these with our lawyer, and reassured that we were in the right, told our agent that a deal was a deal.

As the closing date approached the agent suddenly began pressuring us to give in to the buyer. He even went so far as to say that he would pay for the rewiring out of his commission, if only we would force our neighbors to write a letter promising that there was no property dispute. Their lawyer told them that since there never was any dispute, and since the buyer was obviously of a litigious nature, they should sign nothing.

Next the buyer appeared on their door step unannounced demanding a letter from them. They balked.

The day of the sale the buyer backed out and abandoned his deposit.

We cooled for two days, then on Monday contacted the agent.

He immediately began trying to force us to move the fence so that he could rescue the dead deal. Nothing we could say could convince him to let it go and re-list the house. Finally we had our lawyer call him to read him the riot act.

It was nearly a week before the lock box returned to the door, allowing other agents to get in and show the house. It was several more days before a sign went up.

When first listed our agent had four groups tour the house in three days, three of which made offers at the asking price. He was so successful that calls from other interested parties went unreturned. There was so much interest that we were sure that we had been talked into lowballing the price.

It was more than a week before anyone toured the house the second time it was listed. It was two weeks from the closing of the dead deal before a newspaper ad went in. Of the very few groups that actually saw the house in the next three weeks, one of them was met by me when no agent showed up to let them in.

As we approached the date a month from original failed closing our agent brought us one offer. It was for $7,750 less than the asking price. He was neither embarrassed nor apologetic for handing us such a pathetic offer.

We finally accepted an offer which was $3,000 off the asking price. It was obvious that nothing would move this agent enough to get him interested in selling, so we had to accept whatever we could get.

Sadly we had been battered own to the point where it was easier to take a loss than it would have been to keep hounding the idiot agent to do his job.

In the meantime we’re also out of pocket for several thousand dollars in expenses, and are looking at the very real possibility that we will wind up in small claims court to try and recover some of that from the first buyer.

Now I know that many people have friends who sell real estate, and they tell me that their agent buddies are honest and forthright. Since every agent that we’ve dealt with has been referred to us by a well meaning friend I find that hard to believe.

From this day forward it is assumed that all real estate agents are our adversaries, not our friends.

Ok, really even I thought that my battles with Bell Canada were at an end. In previous episodes I described my many efforts to cancel the phone at my old house, keep the phone at my new house, and change my mailing address.

As you will remember, over the course of several weeks Bell cancelled the phone at both my new and old place, lied to me about what they could do about it, and managed to nuke my voicemail. And of course were unable to change my mailing address.

This week’s surpise was to find out that although my voicemail was back working and configured, the system didn’t notify me when there were messages waiting.

I would come home, pick up the phone, and hear just a regular dial tone. No beep beep to tell me that a message had come in.

Finally I found fourteen messages from several days that I had no idea existed.

Yes, they promise that technician will look at it by Tuesday….

Would you pay $75.00 (includes lunch) to attend an event described like this?

“Spend quality networking time with Executive Directors and Senior Managers enhancing support systems for leadership and management in today’s complex and challenging operational environment.”

Yeah, I wouldn’t either….

If you read the entire blurb at the right, you’ll see that this half day (includes lunch) event was touted as something that would allow local non-profit managers to meet and plan for the future.

Three days before the event – one which actually I would have wanted to attend, except that $75 (includes lunch) is a bit rich for my blood since I work in the non-profit sector – I e-mailed them from their website to ask a couple of questions.

The page that talks about this is rather lacking in details for an event with a $75 ticket price. Can you give me details on who is sponsoring it, who the presenters or facilitators will be, and some idea of the size of group that will attend. For that matter, what are the intended outcomes? Thank you. Barry Rueger

Late today, less than 48 hours before the event begins at 8 AM friday, I recieved this helpful message:

I have forwarded your inquiry to the Continuing Education Human Services department; you should receive a reply from them shortly.

Oh well, I guess that I’m not destined to be part of Hamilton’s Renaissance…

OK – for bonus points, can someone tell me where this oh so elegant and romantic picture was taken? I smell Photoshop!

50 Books is not a site that I follow religiously, but it does merit regular visits. Between talk about books and talk about babies I find it fun and charming. Here’s another recommendation.

If you grew up reading “Little House On The Prairie”, or even if you recall the saccharine TV series of the same name, you should check out this post by the author of 50 books.

Take the following passage, for example, in which Laura and her sister Carrie are warned away from the railroad workers’ camp:

Pa laughed at her. “Fifty teams and seventy-five or eighty men are only a small camp. You ought to see Stebbins’ camp west of here; two hundred men and teams according.”

I’ve read these books many times, but I’d never grasped this scene before. This time it actually gave me a chill. I can finally appreciate the terror of being a mother of young daughters living near a large, all-male work crew that has been long deprived of “female companionship” in the lawless west.

Read the whole post, and the comments that follow. Good stuff.

Bill Doskoch offers a follow-up to the earlier story about the campaign to allow Floridians to shoot first and ask questions later.

Well, it’s an indirect battle. But a U.S. gun control group wants to target tourists (no pun intended) with ads warning them of the dangers of Florida’s stand-your-ground law, which means an armed Floridian shouldn’t have to run from a conflict and can instead blast away in self-defence.

“But more Canadians flock to Florida than visitors from any other country and ads in Canadian newspapers are coming.

“Do not argue unnecessarily with local people,” the leaflet warns. “If you are involved in a traffic accident or near-miss, remain in your car and keep your hands in plain sight.
“If someone appears to be angry with you, maintain to the best of your ability a positive attitude, and do not shout or make threatening gestures.”

Remember, this is the state that gave us Anita Bryant…

Buy it now at Amazon.com. Yes it’s real. Yes it’s a children’s book.

Book Description
This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.

From the Publisher
Would you let your child read blatantly liberal stories with titles such as “King & King;” “No, George, No;” or “It’s Just a Plant?”

Unless you live in Haight-Ashbury or write for the New York Times, probably not. But with the nation’s libraries and classrooms filled with overtly liberal children’s books advocating everything from gay marriage to marijuana use, kids everywhere are being deluged with left-wing propaganda.

“Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed” is the book conservative parents have been seeking. This illustrated book — the first in the “Help! Mom!” series from Kids Ahead — is perfect for parents who seek to share their traditional values with their children, as well as adults who wish to give a humorous gift to a friend.

Praised by Rush Limbaugh and hailed as “the answer to a baseball mom’s prayers” by talk radio host Melanie Morgan, this book has already been the subject of coverage in The Wall Street Journal and Harper’s magazine. Written by a self-proclaimed “Security Mom for Bush” and featuring hilarious full-color illustrations by a Reuben Award winning artist, it is certain to be one of the most talked about children’s books of the year.

If that’s not enough check out Russell the Republican… Russell is a cat. Wonder if he’s familiar with Mouseland?

They even had a Parliament. And every four years they had an election. Used to walk to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big, fat, black cats.

Now if you think it strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for last 90 years and maybe you’ll see that they weren’t any stupider than we are.

Now I’m not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows. They conducted their government with dignity. They passed good laws–that is, laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouseholes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds–so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much effort.

All the laws were good laws. For cats. But, oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn’t put up with it any more, they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats.

Now the white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said: “All that Mouseland needs is more vision.” They said:”The trouble with Mouseland is those round mouseholes we got. If you put us in we’ll establish square mouseholes.” And they did. And the square mouseholes were twice as big as the round mouseholes, and now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn’t take that anymore, they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. Then they went back to the white cats. Then to the black cats. They even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but ate like a cat.

You see, my friends, the trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cat. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats, they naturally looked after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea. And he said to the other mice, “Look fellows, why do we keep on electing a government made up of cats? Why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” “Oh,” they said, “he’s a Bolshevik. Lock him up!” So they put him in jail.

But I want to remind you: that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can’t lock up an idea.

A saga, that’s what it is….. Regular readers will know that I have attempted four or five times to give Bell Canada a change of address. By e-mail, on their web site, via evil Emily, on the phone… everything short of sending it by carrier pigeon.

Time and again I contacted them and said “My new address will be PO box 91205, 350 King Street East, L8N 1C0.”

Yes, you know it, a bill arrived today addressed to:

PO Box 91205, 250 King Street East, L8N 4G4

Really, is there anything more that I can say?

(Pigeon photo courtesy Barry Koffler’s Feathersite)