Boating permits

Well, there I was zipping thru some internet screens, and there pops up an ad to "Avoid the $250 fine!" by getting your boating permit. Wow. Nice to know the gov't is "looking after me".

Somehow, people on this planet of ours have been slogging about in boats and ships and canoes and kayaks and longboats etc., etc. for maybe 12- or 15-thousand YEARS!!
SUDDENLY, people should not throw their very lives into jeopardy by setting foot in a boat without having that magical, life-enhancing permit stashed in their back pocket.
Give me a break.... please...... either arm......

Have we, as a human species, become so intellectually and physiologically RETARDED that we require a permit for simply hopping into a canoe and paddling about in the pond for awhile? Are we now that intrinsically STUPID that sitting in a foot-pedal boat and putzing around in a pool threatens us with imminent death? Is it fair to assume we have become total HASH-BRAINS that cannot, without a shiny little ego-booster in our pockets, intelligently guide a motorized watercraft thru waters in which ANOTHER BOAT OR TWO might also be occupying simultaneously??!!
I guess we are.
We have become RETARDED enough that we can no longer perceive our government mollycoddling the most infantile of our adult species into a complacent stupor;
We have become STUPID enough that we don't see to care even when we see it happen;
And we are now seemingly HASH-BRAINED to a state that blinds us to the ever-increasing levels of control the government continues to extend into every freakin' facet of our lives!!
Although the human race has somehow survived tens of thousands of years far better WITHOUT the intrusion of leaders and statesmen who seek to control for their own profit, we still acquiesce to someone telling us how to exercise everything that we have become too lazy to take responsibility for.

And, let's face it... Western humanity HAS become stupefied to a considerable degree.
Even fifty years ago, if you were operating your boat like a jackass and thumped some other chap's boat with yours, he immediately hopped over onto your boat and punched your lights out for a few minutes. When you came to, you realized that driving in a more responsible manner will lead to less pain and a whole lot more respect from those around you.
NOWADAYS, puerile 30-something males with the emotional development of spoiled four-year-olds jump into high powered boats that they have no training for, and try to execute moves like they saw recently in the latest James Bond movie. And, after they crash their boat into some other unlucky schmuck's boat, the developmentally crippled 30-something immediately calls his lawyer to SUE to other guy for stupidly having his boat right where mister It's-All-About-ME was senselessly driving thru a crowded area.

And the worst part about this scenario? Mr. ME will probably win the lawsuit! And more likely because he struck first and hardest, and can afford lawyers who could get him out of jail even if he was caught red-handed murdering a nun.

Hmmm.... given THOSE kinda circumstances, I get we really should let the government baby-sit us.... it's obvious that people who should be taking care of this stuff have neglected it so long that we no longer really deserve to be able to act intelligently, think rationally, and reap the rewards.
Besides, I'm sure the gov't needs the taxable proceeds from sales of the damn permits anyway.

Politicians, schmoliticians....

Jaeeezzzzz.... I'm listening to the CBC news, Sunday, post-G20 meeting in Toronto. Apparently Prime Minister Harper is calling the event "a great success". Right.
If the thrashers and protestors had set fire to the Toronto Legislature buildings, taken the CN Tower hostage and set fire to twenty city blocks, he still would have called it "a great success".
What else could he do? He's the PM. He's paid to lie his way through any and all situations and put a rosy, happy glow on it all.... to show "Yeah! I'm da man, I'm still in control....."

Of course, we have only to thank the lack of imagination on the part of the more violent protestors that nothing worse happened.

Then, there's the police chief saying that no one is being intimidated by the protests...
WHATTT!?!?! If that's true, and no one's "intimidated", let those world leaders face the crowds square on. The reason they're holding the meetings within armoured rooms with a billion dollars worth of so-called "security" surrounding them is precisely because they ARE scared!!

Let's face a few facts... if world leaders were truly doing what was necessary for the good of the masses of people, wouldn't most of the people be HAPPY to have them around, and wave happily from the sidewalks as their motorcades drove by?
Instead, it has become increasingly obvious to most thinking and observant individuals [Note: this does not include several southern and mid-west US bible-belt states. Ed.] that the obscenely self-serving greed and selfishness demonstrated by most political leaders has wrought massive damage to the economy, world order, and overall political structures.
You reap what you sow.

Hey, LEADERS!! The chickens are coming home to roost... you let things slide, you ran countries on deficits to the point of financial exhaustion, and now WE are supposed to be the ones to pay the way out of the mess! Grow up and get a real-world education about real life, not the airy-fairy rarefied self-supporting snob culture you grew up in! You are so out of touch with the actual problems of the world, and so god-damned cowardly about even trying to fix things up when you try, that things have no choice but to continue deteriorating. As they continue to do.
Think about it... if you have a pain and take a pill, you expect relief from the pain. If you have a problem, you do something to solve the problem, and if it doesn't work, you don't keep doing the same old non-effective thing over and over... you try something new, modifying it until it works.
World leaders just keep trotting out the same old pacifying lines and fake promises and pledges, and hope they can keep the populace quiet for another year, even as stuff falls apart further!

The globe is now vastly overpopulated... there are only so many people you can put in a boat before it tips. A boat has finite space. So does the planet.
We are sucking resources out of the planet faster than we can ever hope nature will replenish them... what do YOU think will happen when you pour a gallon out of a pail for every pint you put in? Yes... the pail eventually becomes empty. Only you're gonna have 8-plus BILLION people mad as hell at you when the tap runs dry. What do you THINK they're going to do to you when they're so hungry and mad they have nothing else to lose?

You allow polluters to continue polluting, as long as they contribute to your political fundraisers.
You hold international meetings costing sums of money that would've fed a half-million people for several weeks, and wonder why a hungry world is screaming at you.
There is always money for your latest political junket, election and "special event", but you cannot put money towards breakfasts for children in schools, to fund birth control education for starving, ill-informed people breeding themselves into depths of poverty you cannot remotely imagine.
You have your yachts, intercontinental jets, insanely wealthy, bling-soaked meeting places and social arenas; yet you will walk past a starving person on the street and look the other way so you don't have to offer something to save their life.
And you sit there wondering why the world is screaming at you?

There is so much more... the toxified environment, the social distresses caused by lack of education, religion-bloated social environments that prevent people from clearly seeing the rational reasons for why the world is falling apart, warring religious factions, cities decaying into dust and civil strife.....
But I don't have another three hours to list it all.
Give your collective heads a shake and get out of your delusion-lined palaces and see the real damage your policies, beliefs and directives are wreaking.
Otherwise, as you are so fond of reminding others.... you reap what you sow.

Am I psychic, or am I just getting better at thinking like a kid?

To wit: Two weeks ago I washed out a thermos of mine, and, because the plastic seal of the cap/spout still retained a plastic-y new smell. after the cleanup I put it and the metal thermos cap/cup out on the balcony to air out for a few days, setting them on a small platform. My balcony is on the fourth floor of the building I live in (which will probably give you an idea of where this story's going...)
Today, I remembered they were still out there, and went out to bring them in. It was about 1:45 in the afternoon. The spout cap was there (now on the floor of the balcony), but the cup lid was missing. The exterior of the thermos is a brushed-metal finish, and is one of the pricier styles of smaller thermoses... it's a good size, works well, and was a gift to me late last year. The cup lid is of the same metallic finish.
I looked over the edge of the balcony to the yard far below. The grass, just becoming revealed as the murky-looking snow has been receding the last few days, was part mud and part grass. Directly below me was the protruding edge of the concrete slab that was the "patio" of the ground floor apartment there. I know the tenant of that unit, and, after scanning from above the immediate yard area for a minute, looking for any glint of metal, went downstairs and asked Shauna if I could look around her patio area a moment or two.
Shauna, however, noted that her kids (and some neighbours' kids) had found the metal thermos cup just yesterday, and assumed it had simply been discarded. They played with it for several hours in the course of other activities and fun they were having. However, they were at school at the moment, and she had no idea where the cup might be at that moment.
I looked around the yard for a minute or two, and Shauna said she'd ask the kids where it might be after they got home from school. (It was now approaching 2pm). I said thanks, and that I'd just look around anyway for a few minutes.
I didn't really think I'd find it, but had a few minutes to indulge in a quick search and started drifting around the courtyard here. The rental complex I live in has five large buildings, each with almost a hundred or so units. There are courtyards in the backs, pathways between them, central parking lots, and connecting paths to nearby amenities such as pre-schools, a regular school to the north, and a couple other facilities. The buildings are assigned letter identifiers... A-block, B-block, C-block, etc. It gives a nice penitentiary-style feel to the place, I think. I live in the A-block.
After a quick trot around the immediate vicinity, I just thought I'd head out along a path that went eastward, past the pre-school and the complex's maintenance machine building. I continued eastward, past two of the nearby rental buildings and on out towards the fifth one, at the east periphery of the complex.
The E-block loomed a hundred yards away. I thought I'd just walk that far, then turn around and come back, all the while trying to visualize the roaming patterns of kids playing on a warm afternoon with no particular place to be. I imagined yesterday's weather, which was relatively warm for March. I let my mind "flow" into the random and scattered interests of what the kids might've been moving through as they played with their toys. I looked through the deserted open yard areas in all the places that a kid might be drawn to.
As I drew closer to the E-building, still about a hundred and fifty feet away, I saw a shiny glint reflecting from the soil at the corner of the building closest to me. I thought the shine was way too bright for a brushed-metal finish, and deliberately kept from getting my hopes up. However, as I continued along the path, approaching the building obliquely, the size of the shiny object seemed to be about the right size.
Finally, from about fifty feet away, I could see the cup shape, and noticed the shininess was no longer as intense as it appeared from further back. I walked right up to it, and there it was!
The cup was undamaged, but had a few minor, almost invisible scratches along one side. It was set into a dried mud patch of soil right at the brick building's corner, and was surrounded by three plastic lighters lying to the right of it... three differently coloured lighters, all partially set into the recently-dried mud. I picked up the cup, noted it was mostly relatively clean, and headed home, leaving the lighters where they lay.
On my way back into the building, I stopped at Shauna's, showed her the cup, and then advised that she might want to ask her kids what they were doing apparently playing with lighters, too. She was surprised, and said she'd definitely be asking them about that.
Later, back in the apartment, a couple good washings-out and the thermos cap/cup was ready to be rejoined with the rest of the unit. So, was I being psychic at finding a small metal cup amongst 3 acres of rental complex, or just good at thinking like a kid? Still?
Finally, though, I can only assume that letting two cats out onto the balcony every second day or so was probably primarily responsible for the original displacement of the thermos accessories. Cats. You just can't trust 'em.

Inertia

Someone once described inertia's effects as that of like trying to push a stalled stationary car. At first, there is resistance, and you work hard to push it and get it rolling. However, once the thing actually gets moving, keeping it moving is not a problem.
Same for the latest invention. I can imagine the anxiety of ski hill/resort owners who are facing ever-shorter skiing seasons approaching with increasing climate change. All their snow is vanishing earlier every year.
Yet, I've created this cool, fun, extreme-sport recreational device that does for summer recreation what snowboarding did for winter fun. Prototypes work, scale-ups are coming, the excitement is building, yet it is so #$%^&*! hard to get in touch with people who own ski facilities. I need to spend some time testing the product on actual hills, and all I encounter are middle managers who have little or no interest in far-reaching considerations of their resort's financial concerns.
Ten minutes with a few owners would show them how this re-designed invention could provide steady income throughout the rest of the year from the same adrenalin-junkies who love snowboarding, surfing, parasailing, skydiving, etc., whatever, in the name of extreme sport.
Best of all, the device costs no more than a fully outfitted pro ski package, so would be available to anyone with a serious interest.
THIS is the inertia phase.... trying to generate interest. Once it gets going, however, I expect this will snowball rapidly. That's the good news.

Entry One

Inauspicious start to a blog. Just got out of hospital for 2nd time in 1½ weeks... again, just before midnight. And I have to be at work in 4 hours or so (4 AM). Bleah. Being sick is not good.

On to more enlightening things in succeeding entries. For the moment, gotta get some sleep.