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Thursday July 3, 2008
The Whine Cellar
Freshly minted YYC adage: Create a pretty monster and it will bite you on the nethers
Google "fails" to pay tribute to Canada Day and a priest gives back his rather soiled Order of Canada award, in protest he says
Can you believe it? People were actually paid to write these petty, juvenile bellyaches:
Globe and Mail: WHITHER THE MOOSE, THE BEAVER, THE MAPLE LEAF? Google
gives Canada Day no logo ...For every Canada Day since 2001 - except
2003, which was also ignored - Google has marked the national holiday
with a unique logo
ECanadaNow: It’s
a Mystery But Search Giant Fails To Celebrate Annual Event ...unknown
if it was purposeful or merely an ignorant oversight, many Canadians
enjoy and have looked forward to the annual one day Google Logo
change...
Peterborough Examiner:
Search Engine Giant Couldn't Care Less ...It's starting to look like
this has been done on purpose... I think this is a bit of disrespect
from Google Inc.
Google's response to the Globe and Mail is one that only a webmaster can appreciate:
"We
enjoy celebrating holidays at Google and are sorry we missed one that's
special to you. As you may imagine, it's difficult for us to choose
which events to celebrate on our site. We have a long list of holidays
that we'd like to celebrate in the future. We have to balance this
rotating calendar with the need to maintain the consistency of the
Google homepage."
The
old YayaCanada website, as a gift to its readers, listed public
holidays with links to information about them, plus an extra link to a
long list of other holidays that I didn't have space for. Thanks were
not expected - it was entirely voluntary and the aim wasn't just to
provide a service, but to possibly entice new readers. Nevertheless, it
was surprising to be tsk-tsked for failing to specifically mention up
front a particular European country's independence day.
Occasionally readers have written to say thanks for the MPs list,
which is not an entirely unselfish feature either, since I use the list
quite often myself. But I was bemused at the person who rudely
upbraided me in 2006 for being a few days tardy in getting the newly
elected Parliament uploaded. Well, you have to forgive a person who has
no concept of the hours and hours of work that go into such an
undertaking.
It was the same with the former event announcements
list. No matter how many hours were spent whittling longwinded emails
down to short announcements and constantly checking to make sure the
list was not outdated, there was always somebody to suggest that it was
not fully representative of the community, the nation, the world.
The
truth about me and Google is that sometimes you have a little free time
on your hands and you get creative. But it's a pain when you discover
your creation has grown into a monster, and for me it's deja vu all over again of working for the man. Who wants that when you're supposed to be more or less retired?
Thanks are not important, but a grateful spirit is if ever there's to be peace on earth.
What's
that old adage, or maybe it's new - be grateful for everything you see
and more will arrive - but not necessarily from the same place.
Hey,
here's a related one: don't ever help out anyone in trouble, because
the next time they get into trouble they're going to come looking for
you.
That's funny. Yes, it is. Yes, IT IS. Well, if you're
not laughing, you're probably still in a snit over being snubbed by
Google. Get over it. They recognized Canada 5 times out of 7. You'd buy
a toothpaste with that kind of track record, wouldn't you?
Okay, for those of you who didn't laugh, here are two more stories from my experience:
An
employer in my home town normally gave each of his staff a turkey every
Christmas in addition to a cash bonus, but one year he ran into
financial difficulty and decided to economize by omitting the turkey
and just giving the usual cash. His employees were furious at him for
having established a precedent that they relied upon and then not
living up to it.
A new employee at a place where I worked heard
that it was often the practice of the boss to give a week's salary as a
Christmas bonus. A couple of weeks before Christmas that new employee
began to grumble, carp and complain to her co-workers that the boss
should hurry up and distribute the bonus so that she wouldn't have to
use her credit card to buy gifts for her family.
=======================
Good
God. There's a priest who's returning his dime-a-dozen Order of Canada award because
Henry Morgentaler is having one laid on him. It's about time he
returned it, considering what he himself has been up to. He says he's doing it in protest, but maybe he senses it could be removed from him.
See,
this is just like the Queen making a big show of pretending to bestow
the illusion of knighthood and garters and orders and stuff on people
she's been told are toeing the line better than most, and then she ends
up having to make an even bigger, huffy-puffy show of pretending to take it all away because she doesn't understand what peerage is really good for - like into windows and closets.
Not
that I'm advocating peeping tomage, but don't you think the Queen
should know who's she making these big fusses over? Or does she already
know but hopes you never will?
This whole Order of this and that
business is a relic of autocracy - an undemocratic, pompously symbolic
elevation of one human over another - and it should be abolished.
Anybody who really means it and isn't just being polite when they say
they're "honoured" has got to be a pathetic pushover for false flattery.
I think Morgentaler is just being polite.
But
to turn such an award into a weapon against women? Oh, sorry, I meant
to say FOR the unborn children which far too many members of the
priesthood and clergy would sexually molest and mentally abuse if
allowed into the world.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think I
could ever have had an abortion. But where does anyone get off at
telling another woman she has no right to consult her own conscience
and make her own decisions?
Especially when nobody, absolutely nobody knows for sure when human life begins and standard cell divison leaves off, nor even where the "soul" resides, let alone when it enters the foetus.
Trust me, giving Morgentaler the Order of Canada was a covert high-Mach trick designed to suggest to the Canadian people that maybe the Allcon agenda isn't as cutthroat as it really is.
I suppose it could be a sop from Beverle McLachlin to the femininsts who saw her as a traitor for voting on the Supreme Court to strike down the original rape shield law but, at best, it's a political move, you can be sure, and not a sincere wish to honour a worthy Canadian.
And
don't get me started on those gussied-up little chunks of metal and
ribbon we hand out to maimed, crippled and mentally destroyed war
veterans as if it's going to make any difference to the hell they're
stuck with. If they weren't so accustomed to having people look the
other way at their approach, and reduced to being overly gratitude for
the tiniest of kindnesses (unlike the Google users), they might see it
as an insult.
yayacanada
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