Fear and Surprise and Ruthless Efficiency

A woman from Dawson’s Creek came into the showroom today and remarked on how there’s no WalMart here. I had to hold my venom in check as she described how the WalMart is the social nexus for the town. She didn’t use the words ‘social nexus,’ mind you.

One good thing about working on my own is that I can listen to the CBC whenever I want, which dovetails nicely into my Get-Your-Head-Out-Of-Your-Ass Initiative. Now I know about the carbon tax and have been keeping apprised on their rather dull coverage of property crimes in Vancouver, which is apparently three times as bad as NY, if statistics are to be trusted (they are not). I was tempted to write in to add:

“One step you can take to avoid property crime is to be very careful about buying used. Never buy from pawn shops and if you buy used from a stranger (like on Craigslist) ask where the item came from and why it’s being sold.”

But after spending 5 minutes trying to figure out how to get it to them through their unnavigable website I gave up. There was a lot of talk about keeping alert and owning a dog and whatnot, and precious little about mitigating the cause of theft, which in my opinion is best done through education, social programs and legalizing drugs. And also plenty of beatings all round.

Have you heard about the “devil frog?” I quote:

Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern Madagascar of a bulky amphibian dubbed the “devil frog” that lived 65 million to 70 million years ago…larger than any frog living today and may be the biggest frog ever to have existed. Its name, Beelzebufo ampinga, came from Beelzebub, the Greek for devil, and bufo — Latin for toad. Ampinga means “shield,” named for an armor-like part of its anatomy….Beelzebufo was 16 inches long and weighed an estimated 10 pounds.

In the “Gee, No Shit” department, “Major world commercial fish stocks could collapse within decades as global warming compounds damage from pollution and overfishing, U.N. officials said Friday.” SO HURRY UP AND EAT THOSE FISH WHILE YOU CAN!!