Myriad's Open Salon Blog

A protest too far - severed foot mailed to Tory HQ

Wed, 30 May 2012 08:05:35 -0400

Hey, it's Weird Shit Wednesday again!

Ottawa police continue to investigate today after two packages containing severed body parts made their way through the city's mail system — one going all the way to the Conservative party's headquarters.

The first grisly discovery was made yesterday morning when a blood-splattered package was sent to the Tory main office just a few blocks away from Parliament Hill. Just hours later, authorities intercepted a second package containing yet another severed human body part.

This is very unCanadian*. As a former Mountie said, “This is the kind of stuff you might see in developing countries where you have dictatorships and coups.” (From the Globe & Mail.)

No suggestion this has anything to do with the Quebec protests you may have read about here. Those are pretty much (so far) provincially focussed. Anything aimed at the federal Conservative HQ would, if any kind of protest (and not some random maniac) presumably have to do with the unpopular (well, it DID get elected last time with a majority after some time as a minority government) prime minister and his minions.

A second package, this one containing a hand, was found in the mail system and, according to this article, not addressed to the Tories (they didn't say whom it was being sent to), so it sounds like a random maniac. A Conservative MP said, “I don’t think any of us are thinking this necessarily has anything to with politics.”

Understatement of the year (by the same ex-Mountie as above): “To me, when you start sending human body parts, there’s got to be some level of mental illness.”

Oh oh - a possible, nay probable Quebec connection: On Tuesday morning, a janitor working outside a building in the Côte-des-Neiges area of Montreal’s west end found body parts, including a torso, in a suitcase in a pile of garbage.

This caused some speculation about the Mafia, which is active in Montreal. But this has been discounted - they may be brutal but not insane. The same ex-Mountie said: “Organized crime generally will keep a low profile. They would never do something like this to bring [attention]... Their motivation is money. Short of making an example of someone who, for instance, is an informer, I have never seen them get involved in this kind of thing – particularly with a political party.”

*We Canadians like to think of ourselves as pleasant polite people (albeit with an evil soul-destroying socialist health-care system), but we do have spectacular crimes FTTT - the pig-farmer in B.C. who literally butchered dozens of prostitutes and may have fed same, via sausages, to his friends. And recently the head of an air force base, well-respected and all, was caught after his secret hobby of stealing women's underclothes and, eventually, their lives, was uncovered. And there was the Monster of the Marachi... We do have our underbelly...

How I spent my weekend

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:05:45 -0400

Well, I wasn't out fishing on a pirate boat or instigating ridiculous fights like some people.

Couple weeks ago I posted about the *recording session* my friend Alex and I did. This week I took the sound engineer and his equipment to Montreal so the back-up singers could, um, I think the phrase is "lay down their tracks". I also did a couple more songs. Some of this may be available soon! Tho we have at least one more session to do.

Anyway, as those who follow my blog obsessively (anyone??) remember, the recording we did locally was in the sound engineer's closet.

Alex doesn't have a closet big enough for the back-up singers, so he built a temporary sound studio in his dining-room, from a scaffolding, and draped it with carpet and taped those big plastic floor tiles onto it. Voila!

Only two of the back-up singers were available - we'll have to splice in the third one later. Here they are with Alex, rehearsing. Our official photog is in the background (hey, where are the pix?)

Recording

Listening to the playback

You will note that tho we are no longer in the closet, there still are some hanging clothing on the scene.

The Quebec student demonstrators were scheduled to come down the street banging their pots and pans. We tried to pick up some of the sound as back-up for my Pan song, but, alas, they were too far away. Alex has his back-up singers, but I could have claimed the entire student demonstration for mine!

Weird Shit Wednesday

Wed, 23 May 2012 10:05:43 -0400

It IS Wednesday, isn't it? Okay then.

I have some fairly long-standing tabs to get rid of. Plus a brand new one from this morning:

Alzheimer's may be caused by interdimensional mind parasites. Ah, so having found a possible cause, that means a possible cure. But, damn, those interdimensional space beings have been messing with us in various ways from the beginning of time. But OTOH, if we just en masse become aware of their manipulations... Eh. More coffee.

Ronnie Reagan's blood for sale! For those vampires that have been messing with us from the beginning of time, a special treat. Has it turned to powder? If it's shaken by Dick Cheney on Reagan's birthday will it reliquify? If it reliquifies, does that mean Yellowstone is about to blow? Or the New Madrid?

The latest cancer cure. Sigh, since the beginning of time, or at least my time, these announcements keep getting made. But nothing ever comes of them. The reason given being that Big Pharma can't make money out of corn-starch or whatever the latest cure-all is. Bah, humbug - somebody would figure a way. Wall Street makes money outta nothing. P.S. - Now I hear pot cures cancer.

GROUND-UP FETUSES IN YOUR SODA POP! You shouldn't be drinking that stuff anyway. What's wrong with water, with maybe a squeeze of lemon. (Note: that advice does not apply to Pennsylvania.) (Note 2: If Ronnie's blood reliquifies, Pennsylvania will go boom.) From the news (or 'news') item: (NaturalNews*) The Obama Administration has given its blessing to PepsiCo to continue utilizing the services of a company that produces flavor chemicals for the beverage giant using aborted human fetal tissue. LifeSiteNews.comreports that the ObamaSecurity and Exchange Commission(SEC) has decided that PepsiCo's arrangement with San Diego, Cal.-based Senomyx, which produces flavor enhancing chemicals for Pepsi using human embryonic kidney tissue, simply constitutes "ordinary business operations." Sounds unlikely to me, and how did Pepsi get its flavoring agents before Roe, or it got it via the clothes-hanger underground? Anyway, that Obama - sounds just like him. STOP SOCIALIZED SODA POP.

*How about a news site called Unnatural News?

Oh, and just last night, thanks (?) to jmac, I learned about doodah parades. Life is one big doodah parade, with fetal pop to soothe your thirst if you march too fast towards the caldera.

Cheers!

My magic table

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:05:50 -0400

I have a small kitchen, and in addition to the usual appliances and cupboards, etc., I have a desk for my computer and a tv smaller than my computer.

A lot of the space is taken up with a couple of largish rolling chairs. I did have three, but one broke and I haven't replaced it (from the ~~dump~~ local re-use centre) because I'm liking the lack of crowdedness.

Why, since I live alone, do I have two or three wheeled chairs? I have cats. Cat-owners will understand. I get up from the computer to get a drink and a cat immediately occupies the warm seat. So I roll it away from the computer and roll up a fresh one.

I don't have much use for a table. I eat at the computer/tv - I know, I know, but screw it.

But kitchens have tables. I have always had one. And it occupied a lot of precious space. A year or two ago I got one with two folding leaves that reduced to 36 by 23, and that was pretty good. It opened to 36 x 36

But then friends had a really remarkable table they'd replaced and I could have. When it's folded up, it measures by 34 x 13.

When my daughter comes over for dinner, I can pull up the top-to-floor leaf on one side

and come up with a good-sized table - 37 x 34.

And every once in a while I have half a dozen or so people, and pulling up two leaves makes a big enough table for them.

Four folding chairs are stowed in middle section.

Of course it has its flaws. A friend who works in the furniture business says that when his company used to carry it, it was known as the-piece-of-shit model. The top isn't too secure on the middle, and the swing-out legs to hold the big leaves are also not too secure. If I get ambitious I might add some kind of additional leg on either side.

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying a sense of uncluttered spaciousness - a rare thing in my house. Though the large dog does take up much of that floor space...

Bad News Sunday - I didn't save the hummingbird

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:05:29 -0400

I found it on the blue-porch floor when I went around this morning to admire the previous day's cleaning and re-arranging. I guess it had flown in the previous day, attracted by the things in the red porch, and couldn't find its way out. And now was exhausted.

I took it out, beyond the gate so the cats wouldn't find it, and dripped sugar-water on its peak. When I went back into the house, trying to find some kind of nozzle it could drink from, it disappeared. I thought perhaps it had got some of the sugar energy and flown away. Not so - a bit later I found it a few yards away, dead. Used its last bit of life to get away from its torturer.

I didn't take the time to get a photo while it was alive, and didn't want to do it in death. Didn't coo in its poor little ear either. (Where are hummingbird ears anyway?)

There was another death day before yesterday. My handyman asked if I knew we had a predator in the area. Maybe a coyote or a fisher. He said when he was rooting around in the metal behind the shed he'd found a dead rabbit.

But a little while later he reported that my big ginger cat had casually scaled the new fence and headed straight for the rabbit. He figured the cat was the culprit, returning to the scene of the crime for another nosh. And here I'd been worried for him, being the only cat that gets out of the yard, and all my previous cats who managed that sooner or later got eaten.

Poor bunny. I didn't coo in its dead ears either...tho it had very long, conspicuous ones. No pictures of it either.

I buried the hummingbird a few minutes ago. My handyman took the rabbit home, because his dog had become fixated on it, watching the cat eat, and then moving in. My handyman is soft-hearted, but practical. One of his dogs had disturbed a wild turkey at his place, and the bird abandoned its nest. So he took the eggs home and ate them. When one of his many dogs gets the fatal verdict from the vet, he doesn't pay the $75 for euthanasia - he takes the dog home, shoots it, buries it....and then cries.

He probably doesn't coo into their ears either.