I’m so disappointed.  I don’t want to hear any excuses about the “Black Bloc” and how they overwhelmed the cops.  Come on.  What do they teach you in Police School?  How to look swell in uniform?  You had all the right gear.  Why didn’t you shoot a few of those creeps?  What’s with using kid gloves on hooligans and bullying spectators?  You should be ashamed Bill Blair.  I think the police force should pay for damages done.  You were totally inept.

Case in point.  The tucked-in top sheet and blanket/coverlet/comforter – whatever.  I don’t know about you but I hate anything tucked in.  I don’t care how tight the fitted sheet is, when you start tugging at the top sheet and blanket to get into bed, the fitted sheet becomes loose.  As a result it forms folds.  I like my sheet to be tight, rather like the army where they bounce a penny on it.

I like how the Europeans do it.  The comforter is encased in an envelope.  Nothing is tucked anywhere.  It makes for a comfortable sleep and easy bed-making.  I really don’t like top sheets.  I don’t want to have to struggle with two layers of bedding when I’m tired and just want to get into bed. 

Another thing.  Night table lamps.  Can’t stand them.  I have never found one that I can read by.  I don’t care what kind of shade you have on it, the light comes from the wrong direction.  When I sit in bed reading, I like the light to shine on the page not on the box of Kleenex I keep on my night table.  Why can’t the designers see that?  No sense – just blindly following the guy ahead of them.

And what about those beds made up with up to thirteen or more pillows?  Where do you put those pillows when going to bed?  I guess you throw them on the floor. Of course, lately I’ve been seeing just two – one on top of the other but the ones shown were flat and looked like they were made out of foam.  Bad.  Very, very bad.

One more thing.  What’s with the 20″ thick mattresses?  How is that more comfortable than the old time 6 inch mattress?  It’s not and it’s a pain in the ass to get the fitted sheet on because you cannot lift the corners to tuck in the sheet.  So you struggle and sweat.  This should be easy.  It’s not.  I bought one of those mattresses recently and had to buy new sheets too because my old ones didn’t fit.

My ideal dressed bed is described like this.  When I look at it, it beckons me to jump in.  It looks inviting and cushy and comfy.  The light is wall mounted with a swing arm so as to position the light above my book for reading and swings back for general lighting.  The douvet/comforter is covered with a douvet cover and not tucked in anywhere.

Sounds simple and it is so why are we coerced into doing things that are impracticle because some lame-brain designer decided the bedroom needed a new look?

I was married to a man who claimed he had “class”.  His father was a lawyer and he was a business owner.  He was excellent at flattery and I could not believe how easily people, especially women, were disarmed by it.  He told jokes that he laughed at harder than anyone else.  Our house was “open house” every night of the week.  Liquor flowed like water and food was always plentiful.  The house was packed with freeloaders who would eat, drink and talk crap for hours without ever having spent a cent.  I know they laughed behind his back.  To them he was a putz ever needy of an approving audience.

They should have been married to him.  Oh joy.

When the door closed and we were alone, a different animal emerged.  He became sullen and bullish.  We never had sex unless he wanted it – never mind my needs.  He took ten second showers followed by splashes of cologne so you could smell him coming and going.  He never, ever lifted the toilet seat to pee.  I can’t tell you how many times I sat on a wet seat.  I usually took care to wipe it clean before sitting down but there were times, I’d forget. 

Still, he thought of himself as classy and a gentleman.  I guess he figured he had more money than you and that’s all it that mattered.

Globe and Mail Update Published on Friday, Apr. 23, 2010 5:00AM EDT Last updated on
Friday, Apr. 23, 2010 5:09AM EDT

Hundreds of years ago, before the 19th-century birth of the science of volcanology, mankind saw volcanic eruptions as warnings or punishments from the gods. The gods were literally blowing their tops, spewing forth fire and rocks and ash to express disgust or disappointment with mortals’ habit of messing things up.

Now, remarkably, this backward idea that volcanoes are semi-sentient forces giving fiery lectures to mankind is making a comeback with the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland. The spread of ash across Europe, leading to the grounding of flights and the closure of airports, is being interpreted – even celebrated – as evidence of nature’s “fury,” in contrast to weak, pathetic mankind.

In Britain, some of the supposedly most liberal and rationalist media outlets have found it hard to contain their glee. For The Observer, the eruption has provided “a reminder of our status in relation to our planet over which we have arrogantly seized stewardship. We imagine ourselves its master and yet with one modest belch it hems us into our little island, sweeping instantly from the skies the aeroplane, which we consider to be an example of the irrepressible genius of our species.”

This idea that the volcano has exposed how stupid mankind is to believe he can control nature with his “arrogance” and “genius” is becoming widespread among the opinion-forming classes. The Daily Mail, a British tabloid that has published dramatic photos of the volcanic eruption and invited readers to behold “the terrifying cauldron of lava and lightning that has brought chaos to our airports,” celebrated the fact that even a relatively “modest rumbling” in the underworld is “enough to throw a gigantic spanner into the works of modern life.”

A Guardian writer thinks the ash has provided humanity with a vision of the low-carbon, flight-free, clear-sky future we must allegedly move toward. “Greens should celebrate this timely reminder of what the world might look like when the oil runs out,” he said. Radio and TV shows have featured endless interviews with people saying how delighted they are to be able to look into the sky without seeing or hearing a plane. A British Broadcasting Corp. economics correspondent says the volcano has given us a “glimpse of a post-carbon morning.”

Ancient communities that imagined volcanic eruptions as warnings from the gods would then try to reorganize society and morality accordingly. Today’s supposedly intelligent thinkers see volcanic eruptions as warnings about our sinful carbon-emitting, and they use imagery of lava, ash and deserted airports to terrify people into accepting the green argument for overhauling (that is, winding down) modernity.

The Edmonton Journal ran an article headlined “Volcano exposes mankind’s limits,” arguing that Eyjafjallajokull’s belch has exposed the “striking incapacity of human beings, however smugly sophisticated, to either predict such phenomena or do much about them.” Once again, a media report transforms swiftly into a morality tale, in which the volcano is cast as the boss and mankind plays a bit-part role as an insignificant force in need of re-education.

The truth about the volcano’s impact on Europe is far more mundane and political than these modern volcano worshippers would have us believe. I hate to complicate their assertions that “one modest belch” has brought modern society to a standstill, but it is now becoming clear that the politics of risk-aversion played a greater role than Eyjafjallajokull in grounding all those flights.

More and more experts and aviation industry representatives are arguing that the historically long and punitive flight ban is the product of overcaution – a familiar problem in the European Union, where every issue from genetically modified crops to plastic in children’s toys has become notorious for applying the precautionary principle rather than carrying out rational risk assessments and showing serious leadership. Test flights by British Airways and Lufthansa have encountered no problems. I’m sorry to burst the eco-misanthropes’ bubble, but it wasn’t so much an awesome natural force that brought Europe’s skies to a standstill as it was political cowardice, which is something we can predict, control and master.

Many have used this eruption to argue that modern society is uniquely vulnerable to natural catastrophe. A BBC journalist said the volcanic chaos shows that “societies reliant on high technology and high development collapse really fast in the face of an overwhelming catastrophe.” According to George Monbiot of The Guardian, although we imagined that “the miracle of modern flight protected us from gravity, atmosphere, culture and geography,” this volcanic eruption has shown that “we have not escaped from the physical world after all.”

This is not only a perversely topsy-turvy and historically illiterate argument – it is societies lacking high development that suffer the most from natural disasters – it also reveals what lies behind the volcano-worshippers’ outlook in general: a discomfort with modernity, with internationalism, with human interconnectedness. For them, the volcano should make us get back in touch with, in Mr. Monbiot’s words, “gravity, atmosphere, culture and geography.” That is, to remain grounded, to stick with our own cultures, to stop traversing the globe. To be imprisoned by the limits imposed by nature.

What we effectively have here is an updated version of the story of Vulcan and Prometheus. Vulcan, the god of volcanoes, punishes Prometheus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mortals. In the telling, Prometheus is normally seen as the hero, the cunning Titan who wanted to give a bit of godliness to mankind. Today, however, Vulcan (Eyjafjallajokull) is held up as the conqueror of Prometheus (mankind) as green-leaning thinkers rush to celebrate.

In truth, this volcano has not tamed us – it has merely thrown up a practical problem, which, if we put our minds to it, we are more than capable of resolving.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of London-based spiked-online.com.

Since it’s still cold outside and my seeds haven’t arrived yet, I thought I’d put in my two cents regarding our dear neighbour to the south.  I have to believe that it’s only a few people that are against socialized medicine.  Honestly.  If you hear me call them morons, don’t be offended.  Those I’m referring to know who they are. 

Why all this kerfuffle?  I can only believe that a lot of folks in the Republican party will lose a lot of money from the pharmceutical and insurance lobbyists.  So, what’s all that screaming about – calling them baby killers and such?  And you wonder why I call you morons.  You’ve been so brainwashed for so many decades, you can’t think logically anymore – assuming you ever could, that is.  OK, that was bad.

I shouldn’t talk, really.  We went through the same thing in Canada back in the 50’s and early 60’s.  If it hadn’t been for a little man called Tommy Douglas, perhaps we’d be in the same situation as the US. Go HERE to read about him.  He had been a preacher before entering politics.  (BTW, he is the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland.)  Poor Tommy and his CCF party went through the same hate mongering just like Obama and the Democrats are going through today.   A few years ago – 20 years or so after his death, he was voted “The Greatest Canadian” by a national consensus.  There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he certainly was and still is.

I predict, years after Obama’s passing, he will be lauded as “The Greatest American”.