Ridiculous Law

I have absolutely no idea why government needs to be involved with this, but now the Ontario government is considering regulating gift cards! Yes, it is more valuable to a consumer to have a gift card that never expires, but shouldn't this arrangement be worked about between the customer and the retail store? As long as a store does not lie about there being an expiry date, who are we protecting and from what? A store should have a right to offer whatever services they want if customers want to purchase them. There may be legitimate reasons a store does not want to offer a card for infinite periods of time (and by the way, a legitimate reason could just be that they feel like it since it is their own damn store). If you are thinking of buying someone a gift card, but are worried that they may not spend the money in a year or 2, maybe you should pick a better freaking gift to give the person!

I Agree With the NDP!

Well on one of their policies:

WHEREAS Queen Elizabeth II was not born nor has ever lived in Canada; and
WHEREAS in fact, the actual democratically elected Chief of state, Canadian citizen and residing in Canada, is the Prime Minister of Canada; and
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the NDP conduct an active campaign so that Canada becomes a Republic; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the NDP conduct an active campaign to redefine the role of the Executive within the Canadian Constitution.

QUEBEC SECTION

(Thanks to Steven Taylor for the policy resolutions.)
Well if you look at my post below, you will know I called for this over a month ago. So 1 down, N-1 to go (where N = all of the NDP policies).

Let's Get Rid of the Monarchy

I know this probably isn't a popular opinion, but I don't really care. I want to get rid of British rule of Canada. Some random family from England has less right to rule Canada than the leader of the Canadian Action Party (at least they got some votes!).

I always had this opinion, but then I saw this picture. In a free society, people have the right to be stupid and wear Che Guevara shirts every day of the week. They even have the right to form the Che Guevara Party and become the Prime Minister if people elect them. However, this guy is 3rd in line to be the head of state so it makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Harry is either an ignorant moron or actually likes brutality, either way he isn't fit to be my leader. I used to be against the monarchy, but thought it was too much trouble to get rid of it, but now I feel the trouble may be worth it.

World Cup Fever

So for any of you that know me, you'd probably realize that it would be an understatement to say I don't like soccer. I can write for hours on what is wrong with the sport, it is just simply inferior. I'll give a just 2 reasons without getting into the actual game (which is just simply too boring to ever catch on here).

1) Diving. I know that North American sports have diving problems too, but it isn't anywhere near the level of soccer. In hockey, for instance, when someone does an obvious dive, the ref is encouraged to call a penalty so that the team has to play without 20% of their manpower for 2 minutes. As well whenever you see a basketball player fall with barely being touched, the announcers will be all over the guy for a minute and keep showing replays and explaining to the fans why the player is a little bitch. In soccer, the diving seems to be celebrated as just part of the sport. The announcers will treat the diving as acceptable method of gaining the ref's attention to get a call. The culture of the sport is just wrong, and it is not appealing in the least.

2) Imprecise Timekeeping. In soccer time is just approximate. I get that the game was invented before we had the advanced technology of a stop watch, but I cannot be the only one that finds it silly that the ref semi-arbitrarily assigns stoppage time rounded to the nearest minute, and even then the game only stops when he blows the whistle. Again like diving, it is a different culture for sports, but I (and I think most North American sports fans) cannot accept sports not being exact. Time is not something that should be judged, if the play is stopped, just stop the freaking clock! Some of the best drama in football, hockey and basketball is the last second play, a play that never exists in soccer since a player has no idea what the last second is!

Ok, well now that I said that, I am actively trying to watch the World Cup. You may ask, why the hell would you do that? Well, just because it is on in the morning and early afternoon and it is not conflicting with any other sport at the time. Plus, I enjoy watching big tournaments just for the competition, they really could put 32 teams in a hotdog eating competition and I may watch.

So now that I decided to watch, I've been having trouble deciding who to cheer for. I don't buy into the crap that because some direct lineage of my family tree goes back to other countries somehow connects me to them. My dad's family came from France to Canada in the 1600's, my great-grandparents on my mom's side were born in Sweden and Norway. I am not French, Swedish or Norwegian, I haven't even been to any of these countries. To be proud of something I had no control of seems borderline insane to me. I am Canadian. If you try to tell my grandfather that he is French-Canadian, instead of just Canadian, (even though he didn't learn English until his teens) I'd give it a 50/50 shot that you'd be punched in the face.

Anyways, so since Canada is not in the World Cup, I have no ties to any country in the competition. So in the opening round I started to haphazardly pick countries I just liked better, not knowing anything about any soccer team. I came up with some good reasons to cheer for a country, such as I cheered for Tunisia for being a Muslim country that can respect democracy and try to move towards freedom of their people. I also came up with reasons to cheer against teams, such as Italy for having too many men wearing ponytails on their team. I was also told by a friend that you have to cheer against Brazil unless you are from Brazil or having sex with a girl from Brazil (I guess they are soccer equivalent of the New York Yankees or Toronto Maple Leafs).

So based on how I cheered for teams in the first round, I developed a foolproof algorithm to decide who to cheer for. Take a country's Economic Freedom ranking, add on the number of people on the team that have ponytails, then rank them from lowest to highest. Brazil automatically goes to the bottom. So here is the rankings of who I am cheering for:

1. England (#5 Economic Freedom)
2. Australia (#9 EF)
3. Switzerland (#15 EF, if I find out about a ponytail or 2, they move down)
4. Netherlands (#16 EF)
5. Sweden (#19 EF)
6. Germany (tied #19 EF, need to inspect ponytails to see if they move up)
7. Portugal (#30 EF)
8. Spain (#33 EF)
9. France (#44 EF)
10. Italy (#42 EF, their ponytails move them below France)
11. Mexico (#60 EF)
12. Ukraine (#99 EF)
13. Ghana (#105 EF, definitely no ponytails here, won't move down)
14. Argentina (#107 EF)
15. Ecuador (tied #107 EF, again need to check on ponytails)
16. Brazil (Yankees of soccer)

So there we have it, GO ENGLAND! (England also has a Canadian on the team, so I can get behind this, my algorithm works!)

No Red Mile?

I haven't been blogging much since finals started, but I just had to voice my extreme disaproval for this! Calgary is cracking down on the Red Mile. So no flames girls sites will be popping up this playoffs. Damn Shame.

But What About Rick Mercer?

The Liberal government tried to challenge Canadians to reduce emissions by one tonne, and how well did it work? Not at all! This is why Harper's government decided to scrap this waste of taxpayers dollars! This program was doomed from the start. They challenged us to reduce emissions by one tonne, but almost no one knew how to even do this! Not that we don't know how to cut back, but how much is a tonne? I read a whole pamphlet on the One Tonne challenge and I still didn't know what I had to do. Sure, they said ways to reduce, but I didn't know how many I had to implement to achieve this goal. Although for me, I am not sure how possible it would be to reduce by one tonne (although I don't know how many total tonnes I use, maybe one tonne isn't too much?), I do not own a car, my house doesn't have air conditioning, I have the energy saving light bulbs in my room, and I don't even take public transit (walking is better than busses)! Reducing your emissions by one tonne is just too abstract of a goal for most Canadians.

As well, even if you knew how to reduce your emissions by one tonne, there was no incentives for participation. There were no new tax breaks for conservation (at least that I heard about), no reward for reaching the goal, not anything! Having Rick Mercer telling us to do something isn't exactly the motivation that Canadians need.

Canceling this useless program does not show that Harper doesn't care about the environment, it shows he values the Canadian tax payers! This, from the start, was a do nothing program just to make Canadians feel good about ourselves. If I want to pay money to feel good, I will go to a strip club, my tax dollars should not be going towards making me feel warm inside. I know everyone hates to think that the United States are better environmentally than we are, but they are. As I was reading the article on the One Tonne Challenge being scrapped, I saw a commercial on CNN from an appliance company (not the government) telling people to switch to more environmentally friendly air conditioners because you will get a tax break and save in energy costs in the long run. Now that would make me think about reducing my usage if I was a home owner!

Oh No!

I was thinking the protests of the seal hunts weren't a big deal until I found out that Morrissey was refusing to come to Canada! I mean, Morrissey, come on! Wait, I had to actually click on his bio to find out who he was, and I still am not sure (is Morrissey a first name, a stage name, a last name, is he actually famous?). Any boycotts of Canadian goods seem to be so minor and overstated. I was watching a Canadian news network (either CBC Newsworld or CTV Newsnet) and they went to restaurants that supposedly banned Canadian fish and the people working there had no idea what they were talking about. So let the seal hunt go on and let's boycott Morrissey! (yes the boycott will be really easy for me since I never heard of him until today)

Peer Pressure

Greg just quit smoking in the past couple days, so to add extra peer pressure I am making this post. If he starts up again, he has to make a shameful post, so you better not start up again! Good luck