I'm No Charlie Dumbbucket!

 Here's a good example of how I roll:

Anybody know what that is? You might by now but on the day I took this pic (March 14th) only a few serious cardboard collectors knew what I'm about to tell you. I was one of them. 

Like Connor McDavid's career as a kid, Connor Bedard's was followed with interest by a few people. I would say most were trying to think of ways they could cash in on him and I am slightly guilty of that myself. I saw McDavid playing against kids much older than himself and skating circles around him between periods of a hockey game I was watching. Even Don Cherry said he was goina be a "beauty." At the time I remember thinking about getting his rookie card. It was mostly my hobby of collecting hockey cards but I admit that to some extent it was to make up for once pulling a Wayne Gretzky rookie card from a wax pack of 79/80 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards. I remember trading it away after getting off the school bus and walking home. I can't remember what I got for it but it was one of the biggest mistakes of my life. One just recently sold for 3.75 million bucks. I only traded that card because I didn't know what a star he was going to be but the guy I traded it to was more knowledgeable and made a good trade. I was hoping I could do that with McDavid's rookie card. 

As fate would have it I was in China and missed all the McDavid rookie card fun. His Young Guns can be bought now for $1500. If it's graded a 10 maybe 4 or 5 thou. So I have no McDavid rookie cards and I don't believe I've opened a pack of 15/16 Upper Deck Series One to even have a chance at pulling one. I COULD buy a box for $1700 or a case of 12 for $22,000 but... now there's a NEW guy whose career I followed closely making his way up the ranks playing for the Regina Pats and the Canadian Jrs. I planned on getting in on HIS rookie card action to make up for missing out on Gretzky AND McDavid. I planned on buying a case of hobby boxes. They were going for around $1200 at one point. I figured his YG to be selling for a grand (which it DID for a while) so I'd get my money for the case back by selling one Bedard. Anything else would be gravy and in a case there is sure to be some gravy. But things did not go well in my year in Canada and I never had 1200 bux. I missed out on that just like the Gretzky and McDavid.

An Upper Deck hobby box costs $350 right now and that gives you a 6/50 chance to pull this card:

It's what all the hype is about. It was selling for a grand a couple weeks ago but now it's dropped to $650-$700. I regularly watch guys open cards on YouTube and I'd been noticing that the Series Two tins (pictured above) have 4 Young Guns each. So at that price (Walmart) of 90 bux a tin, I could buy four for $360 and have 16/50 chance of pulling this card! That's ten extra chances and with my hockey card luck I needed them! There are 50 young guns so that's where I get those fractions. If you buy a case (now going for $5,000) you will likely get one and I've seen some cases with two. Yer pretty much guaranteed one but not two. Why? Why would anyone spend that kind of dough on hockey cards? Well there are other Bedard cards. Some short prints are worth considerably more than a grand. In fact THIS happened:

Dave & Adams (who I hate) put a bounty on the outburst gold one of one. Here's what an Outburst Bedard YG looks like: 

You get one of those graded a perfect mint 10/10 and you can sell it for 10 grand! I've seen some Outburst reds for even more cuz they're rarer and even saw a YG Exclusive going for $543,539. Now there were pretty low odds of getting any of these sweet, sweet cards, but I wanted to give myself a chance. In fact the card I want the most is this one:

The one on the left has Bedard AND Leo Carlsson who is also supposed to be good. This is where I am a collector before a businessman. I want the one on the left MORE than the one on the right even though it's about 30 bucks compared with 700. So that's good for me! I reckoned I had a good shot at this card, Carlsson's YG or a couple other good ones like Zach Benson, Connor Zary... and there are usually some dark horses. You never know.

So now that I've lost 99% of the people who will read any of this, I will tell you that March 14th was the day before payday. I went back the next day and asked like half a dozen people for the key to the display case in the toy section. They're all morons, I'll just say that. But by the time I got to the area where the cards were the day before... not even 24 hours before... they were gone. Not just the cards, not even just the display case, the whole fucking toy section was gone!!! So I asked and found out it had been move way over to the other side of the store. I also asked that person for a key to the display case and she too said she'd take care of that for me. I got to the case and here's what I saw:

ALL UD Series 2 GONE! I waited forever for someone to get the key and even asked two more "workers" there and they said, "Yes, she has the key." then walked away. I didn't buy anything although I'm thinking I might just go online and buy his FIRST rookie card. Just like with the YG checklists, I sometimes disagree with the opinion makers in the hobby. I think THIS:

is the TRUE Connor Bedard rookie card because O Pee Chee came out before UD Series 2. It's the first card released with him marked as a rookie in his Chicago uni. At least I THINK it is... Anyhoo, I can just buy this card online for 40 bucks and save myself the agita of trying to get lucky and pull a Bedard. I'll probably buy that checklist too. And while I'm at it I might just buy Connor McDavid's YG checklist card with Sam Bennett. They're safer, cheaper, and cooler, at least to me. 

What do I mean by "safer?" Well there are all kinds of shenanigans like there always are when something good gets fucked up by greed. My favourite hobby is a good example. Here are some of the things that are just despicable that are taking place right now:

1. That bounty? The thing that has made collectors and people who have never bought a pack of hockey cards and probably can't even pronounce "Bedard" all feel like Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That golden ticket (the one of one gold Bedard Outburst) has probably been found and it wasn't an innocent, poor Charlie Bucket that got it. It was Augustus Gloop or Veruca Salt the rich, spoiled, gluttonous, greedy characters who got it. Some Charlie SCUMbucket followed Walmart trucks around and bought all the boxes, tins, and blasters before anyone else even had a chance. The golden ticket was probably found before the bounty was offered. But why would Dave and Adam publicize their purchase? They also SELL hockey cards and this would cause prices to plummet. Of course there's no chance of finding that golden outburst but Charlie Dumbbuckets and Charlie Badluckbuckets all over the world are still blowing money on boxes that are being sold at hideously marked up prices. In fact Dave and Adam probably found the lucky person who pulled that card, paid him/her 100 grand and THEN put out the fake bounty so they (and every other hobby shop in the world) could shamelessly price the poor and the REAL collectors right the hell out of pulling a Bedard rookie card. 

2. Charlie opened three chocolate bars. One for his birthday, one his grampa bought and one he bought with money he found in the street. If a person were to go into a hobby shop and buy three loose packs of the sets with Bedard rookies or McDavid rookies or even Gretzky rookies, the odds would be a LOT worse and the prices would be a LOT higher than they should be. You see, cards are NOT randomly inserted into packs or boxes or cases. The world just isn't comfortable with random people getting rich. Upper Deck packs cards in a way that makes it easier to predict which boxes or even cases are going to be the good ones. When you pull certain OTHER cards that are commonly grouped with the Bedard Young Guns, you don't sell the unopened packs or boxes. You wait till you pull Bedard. THEN you can be hostile and sell the other packs or boxes knowing the odds are drastically reduced that you'll find ANOTHER one. 

3. When the market was hot and Bedards were selling for a grand all the Charlie Scumbuckets were flipping them like there was no tomorrow knowing that the market would correct itself once it became flooded with these cards. I must admit to having a plan to do this myself but only for ONE card so I could pay for most of my case. I also found out that it's not possible for just any Charlie Gutterbucket to do. You have to pre-order the cases months and months in advance and even if you know a place to do that, they will probably tell you the cases are sold out if they don't know you. Or if they want to just buy them all for themselves. I suppose I could have tried to buy cases online directly from Upper Deck - I just didn't have the money at the time.

You might not believe this but what irritates me most about all of this is that so many of us will look at the situation and say, "I can't blame Upper Deck or Dave and Adam or the hobby shops everywhere. It's just business. If they didn't do it..." and yaddah yaddah blabbety fuckin blah. We're so Pavlovian! We KNOW this is wrong but we just shrug it off. It's so sad to see!

So anyway, for the third time, for the three biggest names in my favourite hobby, I lost out. I mean I COULD go out and buy $350 boxes or even a $5000 case. Bedard looks to be the real thing and I might get some good cards other than his YG. Maybe even enough to make the prices worth it in the long run. But I'm no Charlie Dumbbucket, I like the cheaper cards better than the cards that are being hyped right now. I'll just lose the thrill of PULLING them. 

Having said that... the prices of O-Pee-Chee boxes have gone way down since UD Series 2 came out. I might go out and get some of those and try to pull what I reckon to be the REAL Bedard rookie card.

Now that I've said that those boxes will all disappear and the price will jump up again. I just can't win...

However, I am now finished my 10th master's course and aced it. Another mark in the 90's. Probably 95. I am going to finish my online teaching certification from Avenue either today or tomorrow and that will help me land one of the new courses that will be up for grabs at the end of the month. With increased hours I will be able to get a place of my own (hopefully, and hopefully near the school). They got a taste of what a guy like me can do when he isn't forced into the pedantic, didactic, overcontrolled "teaching" we are forced to do where I work. We can do fun stuff like this:

We were talking about excuses for missing work or being late or not going to a party and I thought we should have more situations when you might need an excuse so I gave the class these and told them to think of excuses. I was asked about an excuse I had made in the past so I told the class my story about my 75 dollar Honda Civic (note the fabulous artwork). It was my first car and I bought it in Calgary in '95ish. I washed it during a Chinook (warm winter wind) one day and by the next morning it was no longer warm. My wet car had frozen. I couldn't open either door but the hatchback opened so I crawled in and tried to start it up and go to work. It wouldn't start. I tried to get out to do something but neither door would open and the hatchback doesn't open from the inside. I was trapped. Right in front of my Mom's place (where I was staying for a while). No cell phones back then really. I just sat in the car and froze for a while till I saw Mom look out the window. She was on the phone with my boss, the ornery Stuart Bruinsma who never really SAID anything while we worked together, he just YELLED. So I got busted outta my car, got it started and drove to work. I thought Stuart would chew my head off but he just laughed. (The class laughed at the story too) Then they got to work in groups thinking up excuses for the scenarios I had found the night before on the internet. Could I do this in a normal class? Hell no! We have to justify everything against PBLA benchmarks, competencies, and guidelines. I would also have to create an assessment and get it passed before putting it on CHAD our kinda LMS where we post all assessments and attendance and such. It's ONE of the many ways they keep track of everything we do.

 I know at least one of my students will be talking to the big bosses about how good my teaching is. Maybe more. So I may have that working for me cuz the new classes will not be overlorded by the PBLA. We can teach normally. That will also make them extremely popular among the other teachers so there will be heavy competition for those classes. I'm hoping there won't be any shenanigans like with Upper Deck. I'm hoping I won't have to settle for keeping my one class and shrug it off saying, "Oh well, that's business." I'm hoping there won't be favouritism or sexism or some other kind of ism that keeps me from getting one or two of these classes. I can't get benefits if I don't get at least two of them. So I may not be able to keep the job if I don't.

I should be finding out soon if I get a new class or not.

For now it's just finish the online certification (which is supposed to take 4 hours but will take considerably more) then I'm off till April 15th.

Hopefully I'll be working full time by then. Over a year and still not able to find a full time job. And folks wonder why I keep hightailing it outta this country. It could happen again.

We shall see...

Modern Day Privateers

 You've GOT to be kidding! ANOTHER post about Telus? Well this is basically a continuation of the previous post but it won't be about Telus exactly, more about pirates, and the general privateering business has become with the deterioration of regulative bodies orchestrated by the powers that be over the last... EVER.

It starts with my Telus situation. Yesterday's call was followed coincidentally (???) by like 7 notices about the IP address here at Rob and Terri's being used to download the TV show Survivor. The notices were sent by Telus saying that CBS/Paramount pictures has traced an illegal download of Survivor to their IP address. That was me. Guilty. I have been downloading TV and movies for quite some time on torrent sites because over in Asia they don't have the TV shows I like to watch. Or they have them on at times that I can't watch them or they have Korean commercials I don't want to watch, or whatever. I have also followed with interest the debate and court cases regarding torrent sites and whether they are stealing or sharing. 

"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is the tension between the contradictory answers." This is a quote from Leonard Bernstein presumably about music but I think it applies to good debate topics too. I will admit to having a very biased point of view on the "tension" between the arguments of the business interests who believe sharing torrents of TV shows and movies is costing them money and the members of the public who believe that when people have paid for the TV shows or movies and want to share them with other people there's nothing wrong with that. 

I can already hear friends and family citing laws but let's not over simplify this issue in that way. Even lawmakers admit there are no perfect laws, we operate under the best laws we can devise, but even THAT is a laughably inaccurate statement. We all know of stupid laws that have remained "on the books" in defiance of any attempts by legislators to devise the best legal system they can. The number one reason these stupid laws remain is the number one reason for the majority of that which is evil on this earth: somebody's getting greased. 

So let's not be naive about copyright laws. They can be and have been abused by greedy folks, the issue at hand today is whether downloading Survivor from a torrent site is one of those examples. The torrent site I used is called Pirate Bay. If you're like my brother Rob you might feel that the very title of the site should be a red (or maybe skull and crossbones) flag. But if you're like me, and again, I AM totally biased cuz I get free shit from Pirate Bay, but I see the name of the site as ironic. Calling themselves pirates cuz they're not the real pirates. We were born in Hamilton, the steel city of Canada. That's why Rob's a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers. So if he got into baseball, would he choose the club from that same city? What are they called again? The Pirates. But they're not real pirates. If you wanna see some REAL pirates, keep reading.

I think Pirate Bay started in Sweden and there was a court case about whether it was right or wrong and several times Pirate Bay was shut down, and several times it was back up again. The case went through many stages of appeal and in the end the guys who were behind it were found guilty of copyright infringement. End of story right? Well, why is it still up and running? And if I don't want these alerts from the cable company about downloading Survivor, all I really need to do is turn on my VPN and use a "pirated" IP address. Are VPN's illegal? Are they complicit in internet movie and TV show (not to mention music) piracy? These are some of the "tensions" between contradictory answers I find intriguing in this case, but read on, the tension builds.

Surprise, surprise! It turns out that the main police investigator in the investigation that eventually led to the indictment had started working for one of the plaintiffs (Warner Brothers) before the date of the indictment. Also one of the judges was a member of a copyright protection group and another of the judges worked for Spotify! Conflict of interest much? Big money can make big things happen. Shenanigans like this are mainstream. Which adds to the drama and the ART, if you will, of the debate. 

Let's stay on the pirate thing for a bit longer because it brings up a useful analogy. In the opening paragraph I used the term "privateering." That's the same as pirating, isn't it? The history is quite interesting actually! Pirates were, and still are, just scurvy swine raping, pillaging, murdering, and doing other generally despicable things on the high seas. Privateers were different. They were private individuals commissioned by governments to raid enemy ships, but eventually the booty one could haul in as a privateer made the business virtually indistinguishable from piracy. So they were raping, pillaging, killing, and doing their skullduggery by permission of the King or Queen or ruling government. They were pirates with papers. The words "pirate" and "privateer" are now are used by most interchangeably. 

Let me ask you this: What has been the buzzword for business since time immemorial when they want to get meddling government off their backs? Privatization. Capitalists are privateers themselves. And in the past couple of decades "regulated capitalism" has been replaced by "neoliberal capitalism" to the detriment of almost all of us. In my opinion businesses today, ignobled by the steady removal of government regulation, are like pirates with papers - the privateers of today. Will they go off the rails and just become regular pirates like they did on the high seas of yesteryear? They already have.

So think of the largest companies in the world. Some of our modern privateers. Do you think they have not been involved in raping, pillaging, killing, and skullduggery? Well, maybe not so much raping but they more than make up for it in skullduggery! And I, with some assistance from Roget, might go so far as to add monkeyshines, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery. And if you use "raping" as a figurative term they're like the outlaw signing up for the gang from Blazing Saddles, a movie I downloaded many years ago from Pirate Bay.

HEY! How did I just do that? Didn't I steal the intellectual property of Mel Brooks and that plaintiff in the Pirate Bay court case Warner Brothers? Well now we're getting into another example of the tensions between contradictory answers and it has a name. It's called "fair use." I guess when I create lessons 100% from my head and use them in "schools" that slide into their contracts clauses that state that intellectual property created while in the employ of this business becomes the property of the business would qualify as "fair use" under the legal and commercial principles of the times. It has happened many times to me but my feeling is that if someone can use my lessons to teach another person, fine. Go ahead. I made them for the purposes of education. Ah, this re-exhumes that concept we brought up before. Money. Although artists make movies, music, and TV shows for entertainment, we're talking about the people who exploit the creators here, the business side of art which, like banks and telecom companies, has been made an essential part of life... at least in the entertainment industry. We're talking shinplasters, splosh, spondoollicks, wanga, moolah, mazulahs... money, and, as I find with so many of the issues I tackle on this blog, therein lies our problem. Filthy lucre. Forgot that one.

If I buy a car and lend it to a friend to drive and Chrysler or Ford or with luck Ferrari chase me down and say that I have exceeded their standards of "fair use" I think I'd tell them to suck my fat, white arse. I bought the car from them and it's now mine to do with what I please. "Well it's not the same with movies, TV shows, and music." Why not? Here in the land of Canada where we pay exorbitant rates for internet and TV, why can't a guy download and watch an episode of Survivor if he can't find it on TV? The internet and cable have been paid for here. And don't fall for that example of flimflammery you might have seen in an ad for Telus while watching on Telus. Canadians do pay high prices for internet. The fact that Canada is rich and the commercial tells us we can afford it conflates affordability with price and they got busted for lying to us. But businesses do this kind of scamming every day! They call it researching "what the market will bear." I call it charging too much. Potato - Potahto. In fact there ARE cheaper internet providers but Canadians are just so worn out fighting the capitalist price gauging to use them apparently. Just look at the surrender in the guy in this video! His face, his tone, his body language... he's a nub! "They raise the price. What can I do?" That, my friends, is a guy who's been raped and pillaged.

But technically it wasn't the internet provider that sent the message, it was CBS-Paramount. They are worried about me watching one episode of their show Survivor without paying for it. Actually I don' think that's quite the truth. I think they're worried about me watching it WITHOUT COMMERCIALS BEING JAMMED DOWN MY THROAT. What did this struggling company make from the Superbowl ads alone? $650,000,000! Just try to imagine what they make when you pay the cable company to watch their channel with commercials. Or what they make from their cut of the money you pay the cable company to watch their channel WITHOUT commercials. Boggles the mind doesn't it?

So what it comes down to is simple: It's got nothing to do with copyright laws or intellectual property or any of that shit. They want MORE money. And in this world of unethical moral relativism piracy is not right or wrong, it just depends who's doing it.

How is Telus Like The Hotel California?

 Since I only get the chance once every four years I reckon I'll do a Feb. 29th post. And, once again, it'll be about something that has gotten really bad in Canada. It's something I've written about here before. The Hotel California of phone/internet/TV providers - Telus. I imagine Shaw and Rogers are like this too, and I had a HELLUVA time trying to cancel the Bell phone service I got upon returning to Canada where if you want any kind of cable or phone you can check in any time you like but you can never leave.

I am talking to the citizens of Canada right now: 

"Bro" evidently refers to both the male and female of the Canadian species now as I hear when I'm on the way to work and my bus picks up students from the high school and instantly transports me from Calgary to Delhi. Not just the crowding either. Whoops! Who said that? 

Yes, males and females are calling each other "bro" now or some iteration of it depending on whether they have had enough energy drink to move their mouths or if they will just let the word ooze out like jelly from a Tim Horton's donut. So I want to know from all you Canadian BRUHS, what the hell were you doing the whole time I was away? "O Canada we stand on guard for thee." You SING that... 

While you were all "on guard" this place took all forms of communication and monopolized them! Don't you know what happens when something is monopolized? They get away with whatever the hell they want, that's what. Phone/internet and even TV are all FAR too important to be left unguarded from the capitalist swine. Yes loyal readers I am STILL getting harassed by Telus. Despite one of THEIR operators, Ophelia from the Philippines I think was her name, giving me a guarantee that I have a zero balance with them from the time I mistakenly signed up for internet when I lived in Trail, they continue to call me and send me email threatening to sick collectors on me and ruin my non-existent credit rating. Trundle alert! Trundle alert!

I should point out here that I really do not have a credit rating. This is one of those things about Canada that I mentioned in a previous post that make me feel like a stranger in a strange land here. Nobody believes me when I say I don't have a credit rating. They correct me and say, "You mean your credit is bad. Everybody has a credit rating." That's what my landlord in Trail said. Then he called in a credit check on me. There are lots of things you can't do without a credit rating in Canada like rent a place, get a loan to buy a place, get a credit card, get a credit rating... This is ANOTHER thing Canadians allowed to get worse while I was away. Credit in Canada is just as much of a monopoly as cable and phone. Well they call the big 5 banks an "oligopoly" actually. TD, Royal, Scotia, CIBC, and BMO. So 4 telecom companies Shaw, Bell, Rogers, and Telus and I think Rogers just bought up Shaw so 3 telecom companies and 5 banks. That's all our money and communication. We can't live without phones, internet, money, and putting our money in banks and we can't live without credit, something that by no coincidence is established mainly at these very few agencies. We have no choice but to use these agencies which is an affront to our personal agency. 

This gives you a better idea of what I meant when I said in a previous post that every time I look at a car I know how useful (necessary as they say here in Canada) one would be, I just can't justify the entrapment it represents. Especially if you get a loan to buy one. I feel like Canadians are almost trapped in our culture. Maybe that's why I get a completely different feeling when I look up and see a jet in the sky above Canada. 

Today I got not one but TWO calls from Telus. I just refused the first one but, God help me, curiosity got the better of me and I answered the second one with my best impression of a Canadian high school student, "Heeooo?" "Hello is this Dave?" First of all it didn't sound like the call originated at a call center in Manila or Delhi. That was new. Second of all, Dave? Did I register with Telus under Dave? I thought I used David. He'd caught me off guard so I answered in the affirmative. I was intrigued. Without an Indian or Filipino accent the bruh on the other end of the line says to me, "Hi, my name is Mabranbenlucam and I'm wondering how your day is going so far." This did not sound like a teenaged Canadian. He enunciated with vim and vigor that belied his pure loathing of his job. Even so I still didn't manage to catch his name. I never do. Ophelia wasn't Ophelia. I just made that up. It was something like that. I am pretty sure marble mouthing your name is taught on the first day of training at Telus telemarketing school. 

"It hasn't been great," I replied. He started with a tone of genuine imitation concern that he learned on the second day of training at Telus telemarketing school but I cut him off. "Can I ask what this is about?" "Sure Dave, because of your account with us you have qualified for some special deals..." I cut him off again. "What account? I had an account with Telus that took me several months to figure out how to cancel and I finally reached one of your operators who told me I had a balance of zero on that account." He said, "I assume you are now dealing with Shaw then?" I hastily said, "No, I don't have any internet. Don't want any. And I am not interested in starting up a new account with Telus that there is no way of closing. Please put that on your records. And please stop calling me, if I want Telus I'll find YOU. But I can't imagine..." This time he cut ME off, "Well have a nice rest of your day Dave." Now his cheery tone just sounded smug. I wanted to drive Mabranbenlucam down a dark desert highway and work up a sweet summer sweat stabbing him with steely knives till I found the passage back to the place I was before. But I can't! I CAN'T! I must have signed that Telus contract in blood because I think it will haunt me forever!

Punters, Pants and Pulp

 While enjoying a breakfast BELT, not the kind I've enjoyed just after sunup on a Thai golf course with a gaggle of punters who were on the piss last night or may still be, I mean bacon, egg, lettuce and tomato, and waiting for the already late furnace repair guy, I got to thinking. 

Woah! Car tires screech. That might be the most loaded opening sentence of this blog ever. "Where's he gonna go from here?" So many springboards in one run-on, terribly awkward sentence! I could define punting. I don't mean the American kind like the MVP's of the first half of this year's Super Bowl. I don't mean the UK kind either like the kind of guy you might call "Delboy" who would have bet on the punters being the MVP's of the first half of this year's Super Bowl. I'll let you look up what "punters" are in Thailand. That's not where I was headed. And before you ask, the furnace is fine. I'm not reliving the nightmare of the broken boiler in my Mokpo apartment that wasn't fixed for weeks and I couldn't shower or wash dishes at home because the water was frozen. That's not where I was going either although it IS nice to have proper furnace heating and not water in the floor that freezes every winter. I know a lot of people like the Korean "ondol" heating but I always hated it. And, right on cue, the furnace turns on circulating 20-degree air so the floors aren't as hot as a black sand Olongapo beach while waist level to the ceiling is cold enough to hang a moose.

What I got to thinking about was something of a recurring thought process. I wonder if any of you ever do this... You're eating a BELT and you start thinking, "If I could bring this back in time and give one bite to the King of England, I'd be knighted!" But then you continue thinking rather than remaining in your happy daydream of the hedonistic pleasures of knighthood you wonder if you could make mayonnaise from scratch. There's eggs in it isn't there? What else? And they had bread back in the middle ages but I don't believe they had toasters. I'd have to fry the bread, probably over an open medieval flame. And the first ingredient of the BELT, the bacon, it's no cinch to smoke pork belly and slice it in thin strips either. The tomatoes and lettuce though... how good would THEY be?!?! I imagine produce has lost a LOT of flavour since then just through culling, pruning, cross-breeding, and genetically engineering for maximum profit at the cost of yumminess. And the eggs. They would probably be BURSTING with flavour! Not so easily fried without a Teflon skillet or plastic spatula to flip the eggs with, but mighty tasty nonetheless. Heck, the chicken that laid the eggs would be too! What the hay, I'd put a hunk of chicken on that sandwich too. And if chicken meat was better you KNOW beef would be too so throw a beef patty on the sandwich for good measure. My mouth is watering just imagining this now and I've already finished my BELT. To be completely honest, two of them. But what would I call this sandwich fit for a king? Let's see... bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato, chicken, and a hamburger patty... ZOUNDS, I'd call it a BELTCH!

I don't know if the name of the sandwich would catch on as well as the taste. Medieval folk had the time to express things in the King's English without representing entire words with single letters or syllables. Indeed, shortening words like barbecue to "barby" or "BBQ" might have been seen as needlessly stupefying one's audience. Oh I might use the acronym BELTCH in certain circles elite enough to understand its meaning, I am, after all, a knight, but I mightn't throw such pearls to the swine-like serfs and peasants England was crawling with in the dark ages.  

Yes, my dear reader, I believe we've hacked our way through that jungle of an opening sentence and rambled and trundled a la Henri Mouhot onto the topic of this post. The furnace repairman was supposed to come between 8 and 9 and it's now 11:22 so I didn't need to put on my pants, I might just as well have worn only...  my pants. English can be mystifying enough a language without adding to its impreciseness with desperate use of abbreviations uttered as statements of loyalty to the members of the groups blessed with their understanding. Regional definitions of punts and pants can frustratingly vary more than enough to befuddle even an accomplished purveyor of this bastard tongue, we don't need you assuming our accomplishment of deciphering seemingly random mashes of letters, or slapping us upside the head with our ignorance of them. Even before I was chasing wallpaper that will undoubtedly raise my station in life by producing several written statements a week the purpose of which is to do precisely what acronyms and abbreviations are often repurposed for - and that is to assure our betters, with just the perfect quantity of sniveling suppliance, that we subscribe to and wish to belong to their clubs, I had a healthy distaste for politicians, philosophers, sophists and salespeople who purposely spoke in elevated language for the purposes of hiding the flaccidity of their message behind the awe at their eloquence. Now the life has worn me down to a nub and I am on the fast track to becoming that which I had grown to hate, it behooves me to find fault in the minor area of the hypocrisy I have embraced... that I have not yet embraced: the overuse of abbreviations, acronyms, and short forms to give the impression of superior knowledge or status. 

I know you probably all use job jargon that can make communication quicker and more efficient. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a person who uses that jargon on people who don't work at the job. But I'm also talking about on the job too. Have you ever watched the TV show called "Bosch?" It is chock-O-block full of what I'm talking about! I watch it sometimes with Rob and Terri and I like it. It's got some good mystery and intrigue. But it's hard not to think of my days working security, or even before that my days building forts and forming clubs as a little boy as I watch. Just start with the name of the show. Try to think of other detective TV shows that were just the last name of the cop or detective. There shouldn't be that many, should there? Let's just list the ones I like: Columbo, Kojak, Banacek, Monk, Shaft, Ironside, Hunter, Mannix, MacGyver, Baretta, Luthor, Longmire, Cannon, I'd even include Holmes, Hammer, Hutch, Hart, Steele, Poirot, Magnum, Rockford, Marlowe, Mulder, Scully, Cagney, Lacey and we can't, I mean we just can't leave out Drebin. 

Do you know some of these names? Most of them? ALL of them? Can you name as many, oh I dunno... world leaders, CEO's, authors, journalists, governors of central banks, people who actually affect our lives? Maybe not. The reason will probably not surprise you either. Another thing I was pondering over the succulence of my sandwich this morning was the word "pulp." I recently watched a movie of that name with a young and sophisticated Michael Caine in it. I grew up in a lushly forested area of British Columbia where pulp was used to make paper. But I'm talking about orange juice pulp. Would any of us know what that is called without TV? I mean we don't really need a word for it do we? We could call it the lumps or something. 

Even the Sopranos. There's another last name show. TV taught us what is cool. It teaches us a LOT of things. All those cops are cool. A lot of them have cool sounding last names. Cannon, Baretta, Hammer, Steele, Magnum, some are kinda violent sounding. 

My point is, who is cooler than a cop? They can drive fast, shoot people, have super close friends but trouble with the spouse, have laissez faire attitudes but when there's an emergency they're serious as a heart attack. What's cooler than that? The way a good, hard-boiled cop or detective talks. How many of you don't know how to radio in a robbery? 2-11 in progress, right? That's like "pulp." We shouldn't know that. But TV taught us that. Here's a long laundry list of the abbreviations, codes, and acronyms used by cops and FBI that appear in Michael Connelly writing, including the show "Bosch." And there's a pic of Michael Connelly trying to look as cool as Bosch. 😄

I guess I just see all these acronyms, short forms, abbreviations, TicTalk as a bit immature. People trying to act cool. These days we're socialized to use this lazy language by social media as much as or MORE than TV, but us old folks know this pattern. It is something that makes me smile when I go to work and listen to all the jargon thrown out at meetings to make the new teachers aware of both their wormy little existence as well as the superiority of the speaker. Like we don't know the club password yet. I see it in a lot of other places too. I feel like it's a kind of microaggression that is largely unchecked because we buy into the "coolness" of it. We use those short forms cuz we wanna be cool too. 

I don't know. I'm probably overreacting again.

Are We Nuts or Just Collecting Them?

 I wasn't going to blog today but I was sent an email that riled me up enough to post anew. Besides, I only have one post in Feb so far. 

The email? It was a job offer to teach English online to kids 6-13 years old. Classes of 1 to 18 kids. The pay? 12-18 dollars an hour. They post the pay as $2500 US. Take out the old calcutator here...

So a teacher could make 12 bucks to teach 18 6-year-olds for an hour. That works out to 52 hours a week or 10.4 hours a day if you only want to work 5 days a week TEACHING 6-YEAR-OLDS! Now this is teaching so add to that a good amount of lesson planning and you're up to 65-70 hours a week CONSERVATIVELY! BlingABC is the name of this cuntpany. It's a subsidiary of New Oriental Group (and then in brackets New Oriental Group is written in Chinese). Remembering that this is China, let's say they only charge 180 RMB or 25 bucks an hour for online English classes for your 6-year-old.  That's the minimum you will find there so it's a darn good deal even in China. So the scumbags at BlingABC are making $450 and paying the person who does most of the work 12 of those dollars. No wonder they want you to work 52 hours a week! The asshole owners can buy a lot of bling with that! Your company is making 37.5 times what they are paying you. In other words you make 2.67% of the profit. Do you reckon the teacher is doing less than 3% of the work in this scenario? Oh the management and owners will have their speeches about business expenses, overhead, and all those words they make up in the business world to make us think businesspeople actually work as hard as they say, but they're snowing you. 

The worst part is somebody is going to take this job. Which is just gonna encourage these analrapists to keep on doing what they're doing. This is one of the things that has made it so hard to find a good ESL teaching job. Teachers are nice. It's our weakness and business is all about exploiting weakness, am I wrong? Am I naive cuz I think I can remember when business wasn't like this. Employers are just saying, "Fuck fair wages, long-term employees, ethics, let's just screw the worker. EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOIN' IT." Bunch of lemmings. Does nobody remember that bridge our mother's told us about? The one that we shouldn't jump off just because everybody else is jumping off it? Or do mothers not say that anymore? Maybe not Chinese mothers. 

And just to put a cherry on top of this story, it was Serious Teachers Job Alerts who sent me the email. If they keep sending me offers like this, I think they need to change their name to Are You Serious??? Teachers Job Alerts. Or maybe even insert an F-bomb in there...

This being part of the reason why I haven't yet put an ocean between my work and my home and native land for... geez it's been pretty much a year now, brings up the question of how my work has been going here in Canada. I have blogged a bit about that, and it hasn't been positive, but I have to say, although I'm still not settled into a good, full time job yet, work is rounding into shape. And in just under a year's time. Way to be Canada!!! I'd say it'll be a couple more months, or maybe a bit more, before I finally start working full time for a decent wage here. The problem is, will I be happy?

I've been on a bit of an Asia kick here lately. I ate at Jollybee the other day and shopped for Chinese, Japanese and Korean stuff. I've got the ingredients for Sam Gyup Sal in the fridge/freezer here and I think I'll be giving that a whirl for dinner on the weekend with Rob and Terri. I dunno if they'll like it but honestly, who doesn't like sam gyup sal???

Yummy dog? I took this at the Japanese 100 Yen store here. It's called something else but I forget the name. Things are more than 100 yen too. I didn't buy these but I thought about it. lol. For those rare occasions when I'm craving poshintang...

That's the grill I'm gonna buy to give Terri and Rob a taste of my Korean "heritage." Ar ar. 

That's what it looks like only I'll have garlic, mushrooms, and kimchi grillin' on there too. 

I've caught myself thinking wistfully of life overseas quite a bit lately. Maybe it's the fact that I always had enough money to go out and GET some food like this while I lived there. Or maybe I'm missing friends. I think it has a lot to do with something I never thought I'd say though: I don't fit into my culture any more in a lot of ways. 

When I'm on the bus I look out the window and see all the people driving their cars and think of all the money they have to pay for their cars, fuel, repairs, insurance, and of course licensing I get scared. Literally fear rushes over me. It's not the expense and it's not the thought of driving or even flunking the driver's test again. Although those driving examiners are monstrous creatures! I think it's the fear of how a car would force me to stay in one place and likely at one job for an extended period of time. I was recently reading Somerset Maugham's "Razor's Edge" and Larry, the main character reads a lot, travels a lot, explores a lot, thinks a lot, and does a lot because he never weighs himself down with possessions of any kind. Even marriage is mentioned as almost as comprehensive an ending as death. 

I'm staying with my brother Rob and sister-in-law Terri and they have a lot of possessions! But they seem comfortable traveling all over the place and leaving their stuff unattended while they're out. Their address is... Their alarm code is... The names of the attack dogs are... 

I think that's great and I envy them for the many trips they've taken and things they've seen that I haven't. More than the pile of possessions. This may be my dilemma. I am not going to be able to acquire enough of a pile of possessions to enable me to do the travelling I'd like to do, and if I did, I don't know if I'd be comfortable leaving my pile of stuff to do that travelling. 

The goal in Canada, and it's the goal of our culture to be honest, is to get that pile of stuff. You need to chain yourself to the country, a location, a job, maybe a spouse and some kids, and a lot of the stuff in your pile in order to accrue enough wealth to explore what life beyond that pile of stuff is like. In the Razor's Edge, Larry had an inheritance or a patronage I think. He gallivanted all over the world on it. He worked too but only for the experience. He much preferred to "loaf." When his wife-to-be heard that, she just couldn't understand it! I totally understood it. Oh for a patronage that allowed me to explore the world and soak in more than the miniscule single piece of the mosaic most are afforded!

I think if I choose to live and work in Canada I'll need to find a way to satisfy myself with that limited view of the whole mosaic. I don't know if I can do that anymore after having seen some of the other pieces. I am hoping a good job with high pay might be encouragement enough but I'm doubtful.

Having said that, it appears that the option of working overseas and making enough money to see the sights, travel, and immerse myself in a few more cultures might be disappearing. The offers I keep seeing are looking more and more like BlingABC's cheap chicanery. 

At any rate, I find out soon if I'll get extended hours at the LINK ESL job I'm doing part-time. If so, I will most likely accept them. If not, I still have a lucrative security offer that will allow me to collect a few nuts and maybe a den in which to squirrel them away. I'll keep you updated dear readers.

Ciao for now. 

My Best Buddy Kelly

 I was challenged by my teacher this week, (the second of my 10th master's of education course which is the Understanding Barriers To Learning course I am taking right now) to imagine there are two students with learning disabilities in my classroom. What would I do with seating arrangement (eye roll) and how would they impact my role as teacher. This is what I wrote to make the best of this pretty pedestrian writing assignment:

Two Students With Disabilities

I have worked with students with disabilities before and have read literature that included recommendations for classroom accommodations that should be made for students with physical, sensory, or intellectual disabilities and it seems the more I do either, the more my teaching style is reinforced as “disability friendly.” Like Faris Algahtani, I attribute some of my methods to constructivist and behaviorist principles (Algahtani, 2017), but I think I owe even more to a young man named Kelly who is one of the members of a family of very close friends of mine.

 Almost single-handedly Kelly taught me about challenges with recall, learning generalization, and motivation that are common in students with intellectual disabilities (Algahtani, 2017). He gave me object lessons on the difficulties with self-esteem students encounter when they try very hard but are just overwhelmed with the information teachers are trying to teach them and they become frustrated and lash out (Algahtani, 2017). He graphically illustrated struggles with social skills, conceptual skills, and practical skills that make learning more difficult for students with intellectual disabilities as well (Algahtani, 2017). Maybe most importantly, Kelly employed the teaching tactic of modeling to educate me on the various strengths that exist alongside the weaknesses students with intellectual barriers to learning have. Incidentally, Kelly has Down’s Syndrome, and he has the above weaknesses.

Kelly has many strengths as well. To list just a few, Kelly has an uncommonly developed dedication to making people laugh. He has capacities far beyond most of his peers for joy, affection, and forgiveness. When Kelly hugs you, he means it. These are strengths that short-term teachers may not discover in Kelly and without getting to know him well, some of his teachers have developed similar weaknesses as described above such as frustration, demotivation, and, sadly, self-esteem issues that cause them to question their efficacy as teachers.

Patience was the key that allowed me to unlock methods that were successful with Kelly, and I found that most work well with all students regardless of intellectual ability. For example, teaching from the known to the unknown; employing meaningful real-life contexts; increasing active participation with engaging lesson subject matter; simplifying using mnemonic techniques such as summarizing/paraphrasing/predicting/using mental images; rewarding good performance; chunking; and modeling (Algahtani, 2017). I cannot imagine any of these being very effective without utilizing time and patience to get to know the students and to find out what the “known” is; what is meaningful; what is engaging; what is memorable; what is a good reward; how big a chunk should be; or whether I am trusted enough to be an effective model for each individual student.

So if I had, for example, a student with autism and a hearing-impaired student in my class, reasonable accommodations would be made for IEP’s such as more time for processing and assessing, closed captioning on videos, arranging desks to make room for note-takers or other helpers, special equipment, noise/light/space allowances due to sensory sensitivity, repetition of answers and questions, not turning to write on the board as I speak (Aruma, 2019), and so on, but my teaching style would not change much. As for my role as the teacher in my class, it would remain the same: to get to know the students so I can pinpoint any learning barriers. How else can we overcome them?

References

Algahtani, F. (2017). Teaching students with intellectual disabilities: Constructivism or behaviorism? Educational Research and Reviews, 12(21), 1031–1035. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1160452.pdf

Aruma. (2019). Types of sensory disabilities. https://www.aruma.com.au/about-us/about-disability/types-of-disabilities/types-of-sensory-disabilities/

 

 

I love this dude!

For reference if you ever teach Kelly, anything about wrestling or Hello Neighbor will maintain his attention, he will exercise if it involves walking the family dogs or riding the bike while listening to tunes or watching something he likes. His "known" requires only a little bit of interest and care to unlock. Meaningful real-life contexts and engaging subjects also require getting to know him which will not take too much time if he likes you. Same goes for what is memorable. I found smoothies to be a good reward in the summer but that changes... Chunk size and trust is determined by how genuine you are. Kelly can tell. These things will all be outdated by the time you read this. You need to do the same research as I did. Get to know Kelly!

Future teachers be warned: This kid can be your best or your worst student! One time he looked at me, smiled, and dropped my cell phone on the ground smashing the screen! And he LOVES me! But if you ever need to recuperate from such a nightmare, you can always reference the part of this post that outlines Kelly's strengths. If you haven't yet seen them, have patience. He'll show you a student that is easy to love.

That is all. 

Canada's NEW Indian Exploitation

 When I first got back to Canada in early 2023 I worked in Trail, B.C. There is a college there called Selkirk College where I have been trying to get a job for years in the ESL program. There's also one in Castlegar and one in Nelson. I've applied to and been ghosted by all of them. Until quite recently this was a nagging annoyance to me. I thought it would be the perfect way for me to settle back into Canada and make enough money to eventually retire or at least semi-retire. Now I think it might have been a blessing that I was not hired.

I took a bus trip or two to the Selkirk College in Castlegar and easily 75% of the people on the bus were young Indians. Presumably they were students at the college since they all got off the bus there. I worked at Teck in Trail and about half the guards I worked with were Indians, most Punjabi, and all were former or current students. They told me some stories about the lives of Punjabi friends studying and working and being exploited. 

I can't verify this story but a lot of the students in Trail/Castlegar/Nelson start out with jobs at Subway. The Subways have all been taken over by Indian owners who have worked a crafty little scam to cash in on international students. There is start-up money given by the Canadian government to international students to help them get settled in Canada. Just one example of a program like this is S.U.C.C.E.S.S. in B.C. International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan (really???) says the money helps newcomers make informed decisions about their lives in Canada. I can't tell you for certain how much the start-up money is but I've heard from the sources (exploited Indians) about tens of thousands of dollars. Some of the guys I met bought cars with the money but they told me that lots of the newcomers agree to give their start-up money to the Subway owner in exchange for a 2-year contract they can't break. I've even heard that their commitment includes turning over their passports to their employers. This is not as uncommon a practice as you might think. It happens in Dubai. It happens in Korea. Even in Canada I've heard of horrible working conditions for migrant workers described as "slavery" and huge fees of up to $75,000 paid to recruiters to get these shitty jobs so I have no doubt it happens in Canada too.

Sorry to say I told you so but how many times have I said that when we are measuring the quality of our immigrants by their bank accounts we are importing the business tactics they use in their countries to GET big bank accounts? How many times? But did anyone listen? I'm not saying Canada is totally innocent, but we were not like this before, were we?

Watch this please. It's long, but it might piss you off and that's what needs to happen. It's another example of exploitation of Indians in Canada. If there were only a way to reach more than the usual dozen people who view my blog...

If you go back to my "Immigration Frustration" post from Jan. 15, I scratched the surface of this problem. I mentioned our immigration minister Marc Miller saying that international students have the "right" to work in Canada and employers need them for cheap labour. Well it is Miller's recent proposal of a student visa cap in Canada and the reaction it is receiving that have been the catalysts for this new post. I think a little history is in order here.

I was in university when the big problem that has led to this nightmare was governmentally manufactured. In the 80's, 90's, and 2000's federal government funding of post-secondary schools dropped from the neighbourhoods of 90% to 50%. Schools were left to find a way to make up the loss. They found it in international students. Now they're being asked by the government a la Tommy Boy, "What did you do?" 

I remember one of my rare visits to the library at Lakehead University when I went between '87 and '94 and I was with a fellow student who was really smart and active in Canadian politics. We saw a whole section of books in Chinese and she commented that they were probably all about how to get the Canadian government to pay for my expensive Canadian education or something to that effect. "Thank you Myron Baloney (Brian Mulroney was the PM during my entire BA at Lakehead). This was a bit of an exaggeration but there ARE jobs in Canada reserved for international students, some that are high-paying even by Canadian standards, and there are programs that include promises of international graduate jobs as well. The government has been complicit in this problem for decades. These international students aren't all coming over here with no prospects. Some have more government support than Canadian students get. I'd be interested to see a report like this on international students from China. You can bet the corruption is even deeper there.

At any rate, the bottom line is the bottom line. The problem can be traced back to the instant education stopped being concerned with education and started becoming a business in Canada and that was roughly when I started studying. I have no doubt that my government assistance dried up because I went from a promising young mind from socioeconomic disadvantage to a pecuniary drain when the businesspeople took over for the educators in Canada. Especially since I could be replaced with a far more valuable international student.

But so what, right? They're just trying to make a buck. We have the right to do that in Canada and so do the schools, no? Go to the 10:10 point in the video and you will see why some things just should not be allowed to privatize and corporatize. People are dying! 4-5 dead bodies of Indian international students EVERY MONTH from ONE funeral home! What can justify this? 

Go to the 11:40 mark and you'll find out. 23 billion dollars a year. Canada has put a price on the lives of Indian foreign students. 

Earl Blaney says this international student "gold rush" started about 10 years ago. So the comment I made about international students NOT paying a whole heck of a lot more than local students is now outdated. Their tuitions have quite recently jumped to 4 or 5 times what locals pay. 23 billion will attract the scumbags. And nothing motivates like money folks. They WILL rise to the top in educational institutions and they WILL get rid of educators. The results are already evident. Some students can't even speak English (24:20), massive over-enrollment (30:50), quality of education is far down the priority list behind financial concerns of the "schools" (14:55), and the government is well aware of all of it (29:55). You can even see our current dipshit PM (17:40) saying he's "glad" that these ApplyBoard assholes are screwing international students in the same ways they were probably screwed when THEY were international students in Canada. Money can really fuck shit up!

Interestingly, Sean Fraser, the Minister of Immigration at the time this episode of the Fifth Estate was filmed, is now the housing minister. He said he was concerned about the "problematic" conditions in Canada regarding international students. Now he's gone. Maybe as housing minister he can improve the conditions for migrant workers and help accommodate the exploding populations of immigrants and international students. Or maybe not. I'm speaking of Canadian politicians like they do stuff here.

The new guy has proposed a cap. Meanwhile the few remaining GOOD institutions in Canada that maintain education as a priority are operating at losses. 

HELLOOO? MCFLY???

How about we just go back to using Canadian tax money to support education again. I don't know a taxpayer who would object to that. Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure, these are the things Canadians want to pay for with their taxes. We all know that. You know how we can prove that? Because there are no official government studies on that. 

Stop exploiting international students and regulate this out of control racket while at the same time compensating for the educational funding it will cost with tax dollars. It's a simple solution but it is probably one of the last things anyone will propose. Why? Here comes that scare word again: Socialism! That would be socialism wouldn't it. I guess we're fine with people DYING as long as we can't be accused of socialism.

I can't tell you how ashamed I am of how one of the things that used to make me proud of Canada - our quality education system - has been sucked down into the gutters of avarice. I would be proud of the people of Canada if we did something about this but I don't think I'll hold my breath on that one.