Confessions · of · a · Hobbyist

Had a good day. But now.... Now I know what's coming. This happens every night. The customary berating and listing of mistakes and ways in which I have let said person down. It's not meant in an ill fashion, but when it's so constant it wears a person down. I am so very far from perfect, not even in the ballpark. It just stinks, it never matters how much good is done it's always overridden by the error.

I guess that's the story of my life sometimes. No matter how much good is done, it is overridden by the error. I can never compensate for my faults. It doesn't matter if I do something good, in the end all that's left is what's wrong. All that's left is this ash of mistakes and forgotten promises. It can never be overcome, and I can never make it beyond the mistakes.

Our family loves cats. We've kept them for some years now, first starting when we moved into our current place of residence. It's a big farmhouse in the country. We have two acres of land and a big shop in the back. I thought I'd catalog some cats I've had in the past, and their personalities.

The first is Wilfred. Wilfred was a big cat, wide and square. His fur was brindle and puffed out, making him appear even bigger than he was. When he appeared, (we often get strays), it was hopelessly matted. Filled with burs from one end to the other. We couldn't hope to untangle it, so he had to go to the vet for a shave and a haircut, as it were. While there, on the exam table, the vet noticed a tick. Then another, and another. We removed more than a dozen more ticks that had attached themselves to him. He went under anaesthesia and was shaved. Now, a vet is a very good vet, but a very poor barber. When he came back he was a pathetic looking creature. All the clumps where gone, but the cut was by no means even and he had random tufts sticking higher than others. Fortunately, cats are not great connoiseurs of fashion. He would have to live with his mottled appearance.

I have found, in my time, that after such treatment a cat is usually somewhat annoyed by the experience. He certainly had that look on his face afterwards. We gave him flea medicine, and he began to improve. He was one of those cats that was in the category of none-too-bright. He was big, dumb and goofy. Loved being petted. I don't recall him being much for playing. When you picked him up, he would just drape himself over you and purr. It's been some time since he was around, several years at least. We do lose cats regularly. They are lost to the road in front of our house, and to the pernicious predation of local wildlife.

You never choose who is lost to these forces, and sometimes the cats that have terrible personalities live for years while a dozen wonderful, cuddly ones die. It's a tradeoff, really. It's hard to keep them inside, and they love being outdoors. It is their natural habitat, and this end is a part of their natural existence. We have not as yet sought to deny them access to the wild. Whether this is wise or not can probably be debated. But, I don't think we signed up for keeping them inside. We signed up to share our lives with cats, living as cats. Going outdoors and hunting birds and mice are a part of that package.

I am deeply puzzled by modern animation. For the most part, the quality is terrible. It's drawn horribly, and much of what I've seen online is inscrutable. No sense can be made of it, neither through the script nor through pantomime.

I've always found it weird how people will assert almost magical properties to the free market. It's nearly deified. The invisible hand of the market will lower costs, increase efficiency and make the world a better place!

Well, no, it won't. It's not even sentient. A business will do the profitable thing, not the right thing. Those two do not necessarily coincide. Sometimes, they do. But in many cases they don't. Healthcare is a prime example of this. The american healthcare system is the most expensive in the world by a wide a margin, yet it is by no means the best. Millions of americans don't even have insurance. Many file bankruptcy because of healthcare bills.

How sane is it to make a person suffer and die of a treatable condition? There are diseases that spread untreated because people cannot afford treatment. The fear of lawsuit causes massive amounts of unnecessary testing as the doctors try to protect themselves. This system is horribly, horribly broken and the fact that anyone can still defend it is staggering.

You can count me as someone who is happy to be in Canada, benefitting from universal healthcare. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's a far sight better than what they have in the US.

Just ran across this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7999168.stm

Strange people. Supposedly looking for "red mercury", the closest thing I can think of is mercuric oxide, which is indeed red. Though it's not worth that much, and I'm pretty sure none of it has ever been in Singer sewing machines.

Important Management Skills #1:  The ability to flick a screwdriver into a man's sternum at five yards.

Important Management Skills #2:  Blame subordinates for a minty fresh sensation in the morning.

Important Management Skills #3:  Maintain duplicate sets of memos for and against all initiatives.  Do not distribute, but file them.  After initiative is completed, retrieve appropriate memo to assert personal genius.

Important Management Skills #4:  In times of uncertainty, mouse cables make a convenient garrote.

Important Management Skills #5:  Delegate to maintain deniability in case of catastrophe.