centre of the universe - the dreaming: Irate

09/16/2005: "Irate" Tonight on CBC television, there will be a documentary on Terry Fox aired. This documentary was planned and scheduled months and months ago, for the 25th anniversary of the Terry Fox run. Unfortunately, the documentary was produced by Canadian Media Guild members who were locked out by the CBC, and re-contracted to produce this documentary. I heard a representative from the CMG talk about it yesterday on a talk-radio program (since I can't stand the crap that CBC is putting out with all its talented employees locked out). Anyhow, the CMA rep wondered why the CBC hadn't given the documentary to another station. The CMA had contacted Terry Fox's family and asked if they would mind terribly if the documentary was postponed, due to the CBC lockout, and they have been trying to appeal to the CBC to do so. I urge you to instead watch the CTV movie that will be aired tomorrow night, and the documentary on CTV on Sunday night.

The CBC responded by saying the employees in question were not locked out employees, but were independent contractors hired for the purpose of producing this special to benefit the Terry Fox Foundation. These employees, and their independent contracting company, were also contracted on a regular basis by the CBC up until August 15th, as were many other employees without permanent positions. This is part of the basis of the labour dispute; that CMG employees have a right to "real careers" rather than contract positions. There's a lot more information about the CMG position here. Information about the CBC's position is available here.

The whole 'labour dispute' is pissing me off, not just because I'd rather chew off my own feet than listen to the shit they're playing on the radio these days. Granted, I'm not the biggest fan of every show they produce, but I miss my CBC. I've woken up with CBC every day for the past fifteen years - ever since my mother got me my own clock-radio and I had the option to listen to something *other* than the indefatigable "JJ Cennon". CBC was always on in my house on the weekends, and if you spent any time at all in the combine at our farm, that's the only station the radio had. That's just a little reason why I'm pissed off. I'm pissed off because CBC is still getting government funding, but they're sure as hell not paying their employees. They're not providing proper services to Canadians, and *there's no new Degrassi episodes!!!*

Okay, I'm being a *bit* facetious about Degrassi.

The fact remains that if CBC isn't going to do its jorb, maybe it shouldn't be getting guvviment cheese. On the other hand, once you lose guvviment cheese, you don't tend to get it back, and it seems to me that CBC is putting its entire future in jeopardy. If the silly pseudo-powers-that-be at CBC ruin public broadcasting in Canada, I might just take that money I had earmarked for food at the wedding reception and buy myself something with which it would be appropriate to hole oneself up in a clocktower. High-powered water balloons, say. Or possibly the very best dung bombs money can buy. And then I'll find myself a clock tower close to where the pseudo-powers-that-be, er, be, and I'll let fly.

I've been keeping up with picket line news, and I've been checking out CBC negotiations. Doesn't make me any less angry.

I heard a rumour that the fellow in charge of the CBC Board is the same fellow who was in charge when the country's book publishing policy was poked with sticks so many times it began to fall apart. Rumour has it he's one of the lead 'devolution' guys on the market. Oh huzzah. I don't know about that, though, since their first names are different. The CBC guy is Robert and the Heritage Canada guy was Victor. Maybe it's a conspiracy. Maybe it's the same guy going by his first and middle names, respectively. Maybe they're clones made by the small-cee conservative right wing culture-haters. Maybe they're twin brothers sharing a brain, a miracle made possible by Canada's incredible scientific research and development budget...(snicker). Maybe it's just two different people and the rumour mill was mistaken. Either way, I don't like what's happening.

You can read up on it here, on publicairwaves.ca. The same story is also available from Canadian Press via canoe.ca via CBC Watch. Or you can visit the CBC Picket Line site to get their point of view.

On a completely unrelated note, I dreamt I was at a rodeo of some kind. And a former beau was there. I saw him in passing, and wanted to talk to him, but I couldn't find him. We had spoken the first day, when the rodeo was also Value Village (a very easy thing to believe, if you've ever worked at Value Village), because I'd had to get back to the 'ranch-style house' our family was renting for the week. I don't know why I had to get back; nobody was home. The next day I went out to try to find Beau again, in the throngs of people who weren't there yet, and all I heard was that someone had fallen from the grandstands the day before. Then the dream turned into a superhero-supervillain type dream where Beau was more of a nefarious no-goodnik hiding in crowds and popping his head up now and then to tease Our Hero (that'd be me). All in all I ended up getting confused as to what I was supposed to be doing in the dream, and I decided to wake up.

And on a completely unrelated note again, here is just a small sampling of the weird, weird stuff that's been happening at my house:
1) I have a moderately heavy brass inkwell. It's on top of my bookcase, near the back by the wall. I put it there because it would kill a cat or maim a child if it fell on them, and the floorboards under the bookcase tends to pop now and then if you walk over it 'just right'. I knew this, so I put the inkwell waaaay at the back where it couldn't slide off. Yesterday, I was coming in to the office to check my mail, and as I sat down (nowhere near the bookcase), I heard this loud 'scrape-klunk', and the cat took off at a dead bolt. I didn't know what it was, but then Mike came in a while later and picked up the inkwell off the floor. "What's this and why is it on the floor?" he asked. WEIRD.

2) I have a selection of vases on the shelf above the basement/hall doors in my kitchen. They, being made of glass, have been placed nearer the wall than the edge of the shelf. Yesterday, as The Captain walked through the door (and he wasn't stomping or running or jumping this time, for the record), one of the vases flew off the shelf, hit the floor, bounced, and landed right-side up. It didn't break, even though it fell from a distance of about ten feet and is made of extremely thin glass. It also didn't hit The Captain, thankfully. WEIRD.

3) Yesterday, the front doorbell rang. The Captain's new favourite thing is answering the door and the telephone, so he sprinted out there, and got there about the same time I did (I had been sitting on the couch with The Nipper, a distance of maybe eight feet). Nobody was there. Nobody was in the yard, nobody was on the walk. Nobody around. No cars leaving. No bikes. Nobody. Cue the crickets. WEIRD.

"Notarant" "big surprise"

4 Comments

Terry , on Friday, 16th September:

Speaking as an average Canadian, I can give you the full impact of the CBC strike by saying... Uhh, the CBC is on strike? When did that happen?

No, I knew they were on strike, but only because I keep up on my internet news. (news.google.ca) The impact of their strike on my average Canadian life has been utterly negligable.

And as for the weird stuff...
1) Get a level on top of that bookcase. I would tend to believe that it might look level, but it's probably not. And if it's not level even if only by a very little bit, slight vibrations (nearby trains, cars, even heavy footsteps) could slowly slide it off the bookcase.
2) Ditto on the shelf. And even thin glass can be nearly indestructable if hit exactly at the right angle.
3) Is it an old doorbell? Enough electricity probably built up to jump the switch. Once it did, it dissipated and the doorbell resumed normal operation.

[Magnus Pike]SCIENCE![/Magnus Pike]

cenobyte , on Friday, 16th September:

Got the level. Checked the bookshelf. It's tilted a very little bit toward the wall. Checked the shelf above the door. It's angled slightly toward the fridge, not the way the vase fell off, but I suppose it could happen.

It isn't an old doorbell. It's a relatively new doorbell. The wiring in the house was all redone about fifteen years ago.

WEIRD.

Parmeisan , on Friday, 16th September:

How about 1) A cat that was batting at the inkwell until it fell off, 2) A poltergeist (obviously!) and 3) Bratty neighbours? (Based on the bits and pieces of the blog that I've read up to this point, I'm not actually sure if you *have* neighbours, but if you do, this is easily explained).

cenobyte , on Friday, 16th September:

1) Could be. But the cats were both on the ground at the time. Maybe it was the ghost of my dead cat. WEIRD.

2) Ah yes. See above. Could have been my mother (I forgot her birthday again this year), my cat (see above), or my grandmother. Or the ghost of the little girl who died in this house. I'm not making this up. She really did. Name was Mary. She had a brain tumour.

3) Bratty neighbours! Of COURSE! I was leaning toward 'pesky garden gnomes', but neighbours makes more sense. Little bastards. I KEEEEELL them!

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