Just for fun, and in this order:
Alex the Shooter


Balloons at night -except it was mid-afternoon on a sunny day with a storm brewing...
My gorgeous neice

My gorgeous neice at a weekend triathlon ... the finish line is in her shades... My sister ran...
The runner and the daughter. Distances: 1.5K swim; 40K bike; 10k run. Yeah, she does rock.

MwhahahHAHAHAHAH!!!!

There seems to be some confusion....

I must have a different outlook on loyalties....

Me: Hey, why do you have all these photos of my ex on here? Hey! Those were taken here! He was here two months ago??? Why? We've been apart for 14 years!

Mom: He's never done anything to me.

Me: Perhaps not, but he hurt me and the kids. He was convicted! What's the rationale for hanging out with him still? It's a slap in the face considering how much you know it hurts us. Don't you think it's a bit disrespectful to my current spouse who I've been with for over eleven years and who is the defacto 'dad'?

Mom: I follow christ. I have an obligation to be nice to (the X). Besides, ( partner) is just a friend.

I may be totally wrong in this, but unless a child says to a parent, "Yeah, we're not enemies, it's ok if you stay in contact with my X," wouldn't a reasonable parent NOT? And more to the point, wouldn't they not, considering they didn't support the marriage in the first place and made it clear they didn't like the spouse during the marriage and that said spouse was abusive and was convicted of assault?

And yet more to the point, doesn't a parent have some instinctual loyalty to their offspring, especially when that offspring has been physically hurt by said spouse? And doesn't it follow that said parent also has some instinctual loyalty to their grandchildren?

Dunno. Maybe I'm completely different, but if my child left an abusive spouse I sure as hell wouldn't be maintaining any kind of relationship with that spouse, especially if my child has said once "please don't." I'm pretty sure 14 years of "Please don't" should have made an impact.

For the record, it is nice to tell your children you love them, but they will not believe you if what you DO is in total contradition to what you say. If you put your 'relationship' with an abusive ex spouse, who lives 6 hours away by air over a relationship with your child, who lives 20 minutes away by car, you suck.

Sacrifice

Some years ago - about 15 or so - a good friend began displaying really bizarre behaviour. Her life had been really disrupted and difficult for a few years and so she decided to make a major change in her circumstances.

That in itself wasn't such a worry but there were other details that were too out of character and too odd to lump in to the "just making significant changes" category. I was terrified for her, to the point that I was worried for her life. Enough that I called one of her family members to let them know I was really concerned about her and why.

Of course this family member called her and I'm glad they did but she was furious with me.

It would be a lie to say I wasn't shocked that she was angry with me. Really angry. The 'don't ever speak to me again' type angry.

Looking back, however, considering how unlike her usual self she was then, I can understand her reaction. Despite that, were that situation to recur -with her or with someone else, I would do it again.

What kind of friend was I, really, had I not been willing to put the friendship on the line? I was terrified that she was not moving out of the city but that she intendied to shuffle off the proverbial coil. The truest test of a freindship is whether one will sacrifice that friendship to preserve the life of that friend.

I did hestitate to make that call but I made it anyway because, if I were wrong about her, so what? If I were right? That was a different story. I couldn't turn away and hope for the best.

At the time, she hadn't the perspective to understand; everything else was wrong and my actions were just one more wrong thing. We are friends again, for the record and I know she understands now why I did what I did.

In more recent years, a young man I did not know well but who was one of my children's circle also took his life. After, there were many, many regrets and many comments of "I wish I'd said something or done something. I kinda knew something was up."

Sadly, those who felt there was something terribly wrong didn't do or say anything for fear of pissing of the young man or for fear of being, themselves, uncomfortable or perhaps making a mistake or being wrong.

But what if?

What if one person had conquored their own fear of being wrong, of pissing of said young man? What if he had become really angry? What if he had lashed out? What if he had understood that one person gave a damn, and what if that had kept him from shooting himself in his family's garage?

What if that one person had lost that friend but that friend were not now dead?

What if?

What are we willing to risk to preserve the friend even though doing so - keeping that person alive - might kill the friendship?


Photo Credit: David Rabinowitz

Read the Contract

Ok, I've said this before, written about it a few times and say it to ALL of my clients, over and over:

READ the Contract. If you don't understand it or you don't like the terms, DON'T SIGN IT.

If you don't read it but you sign it anyway, that contract is VALID. There are certain aspects a contract must contain, among them that the transaction it covers is a legal transaction (you can't write a contract for someone to sell illicit drugs for you, for instance, because selling illicit drugs is not a legal activity); the parties entering into the contract must be of sound mind and able to understand the contract and they cannot have been coerced into signing; etc, etc....

If you do not understand the contract or if you don't like the terms outlined in it, don't sign it. Figure it out, get help, get a second opinon, get a lawyer involved, but don't sign it if you don't like the terms or don't understand what the contract entails. Period.

In my case, clients are offered an initial contract that outlines the specifics, in great detail, of what they're after. The first page of these contracts always contains a clause that states if one signs the contract, it is assumed that the signing parties have read, understood and accepted the terms.

After that, there is a second, legal contract drawn up, which a lawyer must present and must discuss in full. The lawyer must also be satisfied that the signing party comprehends and accepts the terms of the contract.

I may have become a hardend old boot but I don't have any sympathy of someone chooses not to read the contract, signs it and then doesn't like it. All contracts contain that clause - make sure you like this because if you sign it, it's yours.

That clause isn't just there to fill the page. I cannot stress this enough. READ the contract. Yes it's boring and yes it may be difficult to understand but those are not valid excuses to skimming a contract, the terms of which probably affect your life. There are NO stupid questions when it comes to contracts.

This is a link to brief info on contracts. It's a US link and applies specifically to housing loans in the US but it's good info anyway.

yes, I've changed my name to Ranty McRanterson.....

The New Yorker: Awesome Move!

I love this cover! The US population needs nothing more critically than to be confronted, on the cover of a venerated magazine, with their endless, ridiculous prejudices and stereotypes. The illustration includes nods to every stupid, wrong, made up criticism of Senator and Michelle Obama. The US - the powers that be - are terrified of them. They are Kennedy-esque but better (he's not a philandering asshole who kills his lovers).

Maybe throwing all that crap in their collective face will finally wake the complacent, FOX consuming US public that something is very, very wrong with how they see their world and their politics and maybe that cover will piss enough people off that they start asking questions about what they are led to believe by their numbingly coercive, manipulated and manipulative media.

In his article about this cover, Trey Ellis notes that a shirt he saw in France (something to do with a drawing of bush holding a gun to his own head and a caption that says something like kill yourself, save us all) is illegal in the US. The reason it is illegal in the US is that, despite unlimited rhetoric, free speech is a myth in the US. Just ask the Dixie Chicks....

Ellis also suggests Bin Ladin is similar to Hitler, which I suggest is is a MASSIVE disrespectful stretch. IF (and that is a giant, minimally probable IF) Bin Ladin had anything to do with 9/11, the damage done does not, in any way, equal the Holocaust.

For the record, Trey is one of the premiere writers in the US today. He is human enough to be subject to the emotion of this election, and that flaw - being human - is what makes him a wonderful writer.

That aside, however, given the 60 year relationship, via the Carlyle Group, between the Bin Ladin and Bush families, there is little reason to believe Osama Bin Ladin is anything more than a pawn used by a 'government' intent in getting US people to buy in to a false-premise war . The money that has been made by nameable corporations via this illegal, immoral war is probably uncountable, let alone traceable.

The terrorists live in the white house.

Coining a term

I'm just posting to mark the date that I am offically claiming that I coined the term "Celebridiot."

I've used that term numerous times on this blog and so just want to make the point that, if it turns up elsehwere from now on, it's my term and I originated it.

That's all.

What's wrong with that? Just because I'm a judge.....

Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, described as "A brilliant legal mind," granted a 48-hour stay in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood adult filmmaker after the prosecutor requested time to explore "a potential conflict of interest concerning the court having a . . . sexually explicit website with similar material to what is on trial here."

According to the LA Times, this brilliant legal mind is also a sexual weirdo who is not brilliant enought to know that websites are accessible to anyone with an internet connection and that it really isn't appropriate for a thinking, ethical human - who is also a bloody judge - to have werid-assed sexual stuff on his WORK computer!

When asked about the site, Kozinski denyed that the material was purient, stating he simply thought it was 'odd and interesting,' and part of life.

"'Before the site was taken down, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com were greeted with the message: "Ain't nothin' here. Y'all best be movin' on, compadre.'"

"The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex."

I'm sorry, but last time I checked, "brilliant legal mind" didn't preclude having simple common sense.

This Tuesday past, Kozinski acknowledged that his website was full of weirdness - naked women painted as cows; naked men cavorting with aroused farm animals.... yeah, weird.

He claimed he didn't realised the site was accessible but he also said he'd forwarded the material to 'friends.' Given his profession and the level he's at in the profession, one wonders who those friends are and what trials they might be presiding over currently....

He then claimed that he didn't remember posting some of the material and then... he blamed his kid.

Kozinski knows full well the internet is essentially a glass house and he said so in an interview with Reason Magazine:

"Kozinski: The world is probably getting more libertarian. Modern communications and modern trade are making it very difficult for modern governments to exercise controls. You can no longer keep ideas out of China. People can log onto the Internet; they’ve got television. It essentially becomes impossible to block ideas.

Then Reason made this point:

Reason: There is a countervailing tendency in technology: It also allows the authorities—whether the government or your employer—to keep tabs on you.

Kozinski: It is certainly easier to keep track of people, and that will be a threat to privacy. But I think people can work around it once they realize that they live in a fish bowl. They will take defensive measures. For instance, you don’t have to walk around with a cell phone if you don’t want to be tracked. You don’t have to use the Internet."

Kozinski then makes it clear that he knows how to protect material from prying eyes:

Reason: Has this new technology made us freer if we have to be afraid?

Kozinski: You don’t always need complete privacy. There are ways of getting it if you want it.

First, he attempts a defence of ignorance, which, if he were really such a brilliant legal mind, he would know is not accepted as a defence ever.

Then he calls objectionable material 'funny,' in order to diminish the crime, a tactic regularly used by criminals trying to worm themselves out of a dirty little hole they've dug for themselves.

Then, he has the audacity to blame his own child for putting material on a website he had, a day earlier, claimed he didn't know was publicly accessible.

This man should be thrown to the wolves from whence he came. He's either not mentally capable of doing his job or is seriously compromised in his ethics.

There's no question he has some weird sexual stuff going on in his life.

For the record, this is why the rest of the world laughs at the U.S. This guy should not be on the bench. Period. There is likely much prior indication of previous inappropriate behavior, but as judges in the U.S. are elected, their friends - meaning those in whose best interest it is to keep such judges on the bench - turn many a blind eye.

According to Reason Magazine, "Kozinski, now married with three children, was a late intellectual bloomer who, before graduating at the top of his law class at UCLA, wiled away his time wooing women in such unusual places as television’s Dating Game, which he won with an audaciously smarmy pick-up line: “Hello, the flower of my heart.” That unctuousness is totally absent from his legal writings, which feature a razor-sharp analytic skill."

Why is this guy still sitting???

Photo Credit: Stephen Osman, LA Times

Hey, get your fingers out of my EYE!

I have been following with much interest the BC Human Rights brought against writer, Mark Steyn and MacLean's Magazine. A group headed by Mohammed Elmasry is accusing them of islamophobia and has taken the case to the BC Human Rights Commission, which is obviously staffed with store mannequins because the case is ridiculous but they've let it proceed.

These guys claim that Mark Steyn's writing - a column and a book, America Alone - exposes Muslims to hate and that MacLean's is complicit for publishing excerpts from the book.

No word on where they're going to bury free speech.

Section 7.1 of the BC Human Rights Code prohibits "any statement, publication, notice [etc.] that... is likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred of contempt."

As Andrew Coyne points out, the 'legislation' says "is likely to," not "absolutely does."

About a month ago, I watched Billy Connolly’s film “The Man Who Sued God.” What made me think of this film was Andrew Coyne's mention in the June 16th edition of MacLean’s, of Section 7.1 of the B.C. Human Rights Code.

In the film, Billy Connolly (his character, anyway) attempts to sue an insurance company that will not pay his claim when his boat is destroyed, citing its “act of god” clause. He claims there is no god and therefore they must pay.

The case is finally settled when the defendants are left to prove or disprove the existence of said being in order to establish their right to even include “act of god” at all. Interestingly, as art usually imitates life, there is no end to the personalities and posing and posturing and presumption of special-ness among the ‘religious’ characters in this film.

As this relates to the BC case and Mark Steyn’s book, it can quite easily be argued that the Christian bible and the Islamic Q’uran , Scientology or Tom Cruise (or any religious text, or heck even my own blog) expose adherents to no end of hatred and contempt. Could it not then be argued that whoever brought this case has no case to bring really, given their own ‘religious’ texts absolutely expose their own groups to contempt and ridicule?

As case in point, recently the Concerned Christians group wrote a letter that got them into very hot water. The short form is that they claim that gay people are exactly like paedophiles.... except that is bullshit... and they directed that 'information' specifically to a man called Rob Wells.

The group was ultimately forced to apologise (if the letter they wrote can be considered an apology). However, could members of this organisation not proceed with a similar case, given that the letter and the resulting furor certainly exposed them to a lot of heckling?

I scanned their website yesterday and I was instantly struck by the presumptive bent the site takes. I’m sure it exposes its members to no end of scorn from those of us who don’t replace reality with fantasy for starters but who have moderate, inclusive views (and who know that paedophile (mental illness) does not equal gay person (normal permutation of humanness).

It would be a very interesting exercise to have the group that brought this case against Mr. Steyn and Maclean’s prove that their own texts, blogs, websites and publications at no point expose their members to any of the very things Mark’s book or MacLean’s Magazine is purported to have done and that at no point do those or will those texts, etc. ever contravene section 7.1.

Considering B.C. HRC code’s language is so loose, could it be that difficult to swing this case back at the accusers?

If they cannot prove they are not also contravening section 7.1, and surely they cannot, the Human Rights Tribunal must toss this case or launch a thousand others.

Click here for Ezra Levant's very excellent commentary on a similar case and its outcome.

As it is written somewhere, one should not attempt to pick a sliver from another’s eye without paying attention to the stump in their own.

But here's the core of it for me: since when, in Canada, does the law - or something that presumes to pass for law - require people to be afraid of other people. And since when do we have these quasi legal groups trashing free speech because they're afraid of a loud Islamic guy?

I'll be damned if I'm going to roll over because someone from some religion doesn't like it that I disagree with them.

Here it is for the record. I disagree with your religion, whatever it is, because it is first of all made up and serves no purpose other than separating human from human, inciting fear, teaching children to be slaves to bullshit and giving the 'religious elites' (preachers, imams, ministers, bishops, rabbis, all of 'em) a false pulpit from which to promote "We're better than you." Total, utter, stinking garbage.

Oh. And for the record, statistically, religious people get up to a lot more scandals and into a lot more legal trouble than us heathens and YEAH I can prove that!

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire... or maybe your house?

I read Digg every day because it is a perfect confluence of interesting news, political stuff (always US, but hey, that's always a trip) and the truth about scientology and other stuff....

Today I found this fantastic, hilarious article on Ron Hubbard, who was probably one of the most deluded, egomaniacal people ever known to man. He was in great company though, providing you count Jim Jones and others like him to be 'good' company.

There seems to be something about combining egomaniacal personality with a (limited in this case) ability to write and a really, really interesting 'reality.' The man was certainly nuts and probably schizophrenic. He certainly took a lot of drugs and ascribed a LOT of stuff to himself that simply never, ever happened.

How any thinking person can buy in to scientology for anything other than it being a hilarious compilation of crap, is beyond me. Maybe the rumours of predatory legal practices and serious, life-threatening coercion are true.... Maybe it is also true that 99% of actors are seriously screwed up (which is why they 'be' anyone but themselves) and so ripe for being picked to 'join' any 'program' that will help them 'heal.'

In case you're wondering why I don't capitalise the "S" in scientology, it's because the cult deserves no respect, not even a capital letter. So there. My tiny protest.