Willy Loman

Crime: Solving the problem of the increasing number of unreported crimes, that has been sweeping the nation. New laws will make it illegal to not report serious crimes, including crimes dealing with drug use, which simultaneously will be treated in the future as more serious crimes, by doubling the length of sentences for possession, distribution and consumption of marihuana and of course implementing mandatory sentencing. With more criminals and longer sentences the increased costs to build and manage the new prisons across the country will be offset by private sector partnerships with US based security conglomerates.  Terrorism: Eliminate the American’s angst of Canadian suicide bombers pouring across the largest unprotected border in the world. By reducing quotas for the number of family members that can migrate to Canada, the majority of new immigrants will consist of temporary workers whose movements will be tracked by the various provincial sponsorship programs and immed...

Spent yesterday performing my weekly, husbandly duties. Aimlessly and painfully amongst wandering malls, I found myself sitting in a 30,000 sq. foot warehouse dedicated to designer shoes, and in horror I watched as predominantly younger women, googled, giggled, and forced their feet into spiked, six inch plus, heeled stilettos. My mind drifted to the bound feet of an estimated 2 billion chinese girls, who from the late tenth century to a year after I was born, destroyed their feet in an effort to be more appealing and I thought how little has changed over time. Young women continue to cause themselves pain, just to satisfy their own, personalized vanities. Personalized, because the last thing that most males would care about is what you have on your feet or in some cases whether their female partner can stand up. Explaining, my new theory on shoe shopping, on the way home, quickly led to some sort of complaint about my thought processes, which immediately faded into background noise a...

Sadly there is a lot of dispiriting talk around these parts, lately . We can no longer recognize our country. Foreigners are asking our emissaries: where is Canada, what happened to the Canadians?  We want our country back. As many bloggers have commented, I too, was starting to become frustrated with the ridiculous conservative ads, attacking Ignatieff’s citizenry, followed by soft spoken, hazy images of Harper working alone, tirelessly at the helm of the nation, protecting us from the troubling international waters. Yes, it is despairing times, indeed. Then LeftDog gave us a memory from 40 years back and I remembered what it felt like to be a Canadian when I was somewhat younger, in the seventies, when we had a leader that was more proud to be a Canadian than I was. A leader that snubbed his nose at our largest trading partner and opened relationships with Cuba. A world class statesman that opened communication with China, the USSR and the world at large.  A leade...

Trapped like an ODAlisque in a Turkish harem, Bev ODA, the Minister of International Cooperation sat quietly through question period yesterday as Harper and Baird ODAiously repelled questions from the opposition. However despite that fact that Harper ODA great deal to ODA for taking the fall, the ODAmeter is running on the beleaguered minister's career, because in the end she does not matter one iODA to this prime minister. ODA a name we will not forget.

Although I am not necessarily a big Ignatieff supporter, in fact I would rather spend an evening with Jack, I have a real problem with the Iggy Liberals are the same as Harper conbots argument put forward regularly around these parts and in particular by Andrew Coyne’s recent article in MacLeans . This article is being promoted as some sort of insight that the Liberals are faux progressives because they did not vote against Harper’s bills in the past and their new found messaging that Liberals are different than Harper, is not valid or I guess insincere. From Coyne: The difference between them and the Conservatives, the Liberals would like you to know, is all about “values.” That is, it’s about “priorities.” I mean to say, it’s about “your Canada” versus “Stephen Harper’s Canada.”   Sorry Coyne that is good enough for me. The Liberals when they have their act together will turn on a dime, if the polls show that the majority of Canadians are for or against an issue, especially when...

Well son, every generation has their music, my father used to tell me as he turned up the volume for a Frankie Lane song .  And of course he was right as we all seem to identify with and or for some be identified by, the music we started listening to, in our so called formative years. We take ownership of it.  Apparently my music, from 1965 to 1975 was the psychedelic decade, at least according to Q107's Andy Frost and his Psychedelic Sunday show. Hell, I used to play the White Album every Xmas morning and my kids grew up thinking that the Birthday song was a xmas carol for the baby jesus (a spurious concept that the neighbor's kids told them about). However, every now and then, songs from other generations break through and take on special meaning. One example is my four and half year old granddaughter's favorite song, The Killers, All things That I've Done. Play this song while driving and she will actually stop talking and asking questions for three and half m...

The talking heads who read the news on my local CTV station are aghast, aghast I say that city workers have jobs for life. They sent their cubbies out on the Toronto streets to ask passers by if they would like to have a job for life. Apparently, Toronto mayor, Rob Ford just found out that he can’t simply fire the existing city workers who collect garbage and outsource their jobs to contractors. You know the typical thing that happens when spoiled rich kids who took over their father’s business, think they can run a city like a quick print shop. In reality it is a contract, a union contract that states if their jobs are eliminated due to outsourcing, the worker must be given a job in another department. Much like the contract that the talking heads at CTV have with their  broadcasters. The only difference being the news readers have built-in golden parachutes. Bloody hypocrites, I would rather have a beer with the garbage collectors.

After working over 2,100 weeks, 11,000 days and over 88,000 hours I finally realized, two weeks ago, while sitting next to a pool, reading a book, on a hot island, that all my years of toil and so called achievements has made me into nothing more than the perfect self employed, self made, anonymous, corporate serf. Got the kids and their kids, a house, two cars and a wife, who hasn't left me yet, but I don't own any of it. You can't own people, even your family members in my neighborhood and the banks own everything else. So I continue to work to service the debt and remain the perfect TD customer. I just wish they had more of those comfy green chairs available, so I could at least relax when I deposit my bi-weekly interest payment. But, anonymously blogging as Willy Loman, even as sparsely as I do, is a real break from reality and great for my soul. I can anonymously rant and rave, bear my grievances, state my case or just have fun. Blogging is my way out from under, s...