Horizontal Stripes

Posted on 14 June 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Jails started the erasure of the stereotypical image of doing time. They no longer clothe criminals in horizontal black and white striped garb, complete with a number. For some reason they chose a new image. That new image was of the criminal doing time in a one coloured jump suit.

Wherefore art thou now, Hamburgler? If you put on a jump suit, perhaps people might mistake you for a baby in a onesie.

The erosion of this image continued in the last few years. Fashion has not only dared to bring back black and white stripes, it has dared to bring them back in both slimming vertical stripes as well as the formerly prison defining horizontal stripes.

And to make matters worse, these people with the fashionable horizontal stripes are just as law abiding as you or I. There is no known link between this new fashion and crime.

How are cartoonists the world over going to illustrate the act of being in jail by a single defining image? Perhaps they could sell it by showing someone literally behind bars. But this limits the image so much.

More importantly, how is multi millionaire furniture salesman and former Toronto mayor, Mel Lastman going to sell his Bad Boy brand? How will people tell in an instant the character is a bad boy if not for the horizontal stripes? There is of course the possibility that everyone knows Lastman was a Toronto mayor and that might be enough to let everyone know he is a bad boy.

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Alligator Tamer

Posted on 7 June 2014 by Larry Russwurm

We’ve all heard of the daring lion tamer. Often this act will see the tamer controlling these large animals with a whip. I don’t recommend you doing this at home. But the grand finale of some lion tamer acts will see the tamer sticking his head in the lion’s mouth. This shows the tamer’s total control of the lion. Even in this weak position, the tamer still controls the lion well enough that the creature does not make a meal of him.

But we’ve all seen this act and might now want an exciting variant. The show I’m thinking of starting is the alligator tamer spectacle. Sticking your head in a lion’s mouth is for wimps.

Why alligators? Well quite frankly those creatures have been measured to have the strongest bite of any creature on earth. An alligator should quite easily be able to crack the skull open of any human stupid enough to put their head in its mouth.

I have a plan. You see, alligators are cold blooded. For them this means that they lie dormant for the winter months. And thus is born my plan.

I will work my magic in a glass enclosed space. I will cool this environment to winter temperatures. I will test it a number of times with a skull protector that can handle the pressures of an alligator’s full bite. I will experiment with the temperature and putting my protected head in, until I find the sweet spot where I can put my head in the alligator’s mouth without it chomping down.

With the known sweet spot I will take my show on the road, to any circus willing to pay my exorbitant fees. I will become a star. Maybe I’ll sell videos of my deed.

To me the phrase “cold blooded” will be a selling feature. Unlike when it is used to describe a guiltless killer. I will feed my cold blooded alligator well in the summer months. It will grow if only to make my prowess at the shows even more impressive.

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Cats Are Conservatives and Other Inescapable Truths

Posted on 31 May 2014 by Larry Russwurm

I can feel it. Some of the readers of this piece are set to argue that their beloved cat can’t be a conservative because their owner is not and even doesn’t socialize with any conservatives. But let’s review the facts.

Bring a box of stuff into your home that is shared with a cat. Just set the box down as soon as you enter your abode. So your cat can’t see it. But within seconds your cat will have heard, smelled, or tasted the new stuff in the air. In a moment your cat is there, examining the new things.

You might say this proves nothing, just that cats are curious. Curiosity killed the cat after all. Well cats may well be curious but I don’t think that’s in play here. Your cat will sniff and then mark the box. The marking is done by the cat scraping its cheek along an edge of the box. That cheek has scent glands.

Now move that box to another room or 10 feet from where you originally set it. Again, in only moments the cat will have spied the new position and sniffed and marked the box again. It already knows what the box is so it’s not curiosity. Cats don’t handle change well.

You may have noticed this before. Like when you moved and your cat barely came out in the first day after the move.

Conservatives don’t handle change well either. That is very close to the actual definition of conservative. Don’t believe me? Talk to a conservative about human rights. They will likely tell you they are definitely on the right side of history for this one and believe in equal rights for all ethnicities. But fifty years ago the conservative view was much different. Glacially the shift came, is still happening.

The modern conservative will also tell you that gay marriage is very controversial, pitting moral religion against those with questionable lifestyles. The conservative view doesn’t acknowledge that human rights still aren’t perfect even in the alleged free world. I expect fifty years from now conservatives will have moved a step again toward more liberal views.

The way cats don’t handle change well just shows them to be the conservatives they are.

Almost everything involving common pets gets put on a cat/dog spectrum. I am hardly going to change this. So I will tell you that dogs are nothing more than liberals and socialists. You might not like this position either. I will just say that dogs, just like liberals and socialists, try to do what’s best for the pack.

I am now going to take the Canadian political spectrum to define liberals as being different from socialists. On the entrenched spectrum of politics, conservatives are on the right, liberals are in the middle and socialists are on the left.

What I take this to mean is that liberals are after what is good for the pack as long as it doesn’t put the liberal out too much. And socialists believe so much in the good of the pack that they will support even things that hurt themselves as long as it is for the common good.

Now that we know cats are conservative and dogs are more socialist, let’s laugh at a couple people that seem ignorant of this model.

Don Cherry is that famous hockey commentator that is so conservative that he still bashes eastern European hockey players. For many years he was a famous dog owner. Does he realize that his loveable pooch spends its spare time being a socialist? That pooch is probably plotting Cherry’s downfall and the rise of the eastern European players. For the good of all hockey.

For the laughable non conservative that owns a cat, we don’t have to go any further than me. Oh I used to try to be non partisan and for some time I tried being a political cartoonist. But my long history of paying attention to politics led me to see that the majority governments of Brian Mulroney (Progressive Conservative) and Stephen Harper (Conservative) allowed these conservatives to engage in more scandals per unit time than any centre or leftist government has done in Canada.

So I am either centrist or leftist and I own a very conservative cat. She is so conservative she wears exclusively black. She loves nothing better than to follow her routines. But I am still her master and thus in charge. Changing her litter regularly is clearly good for all. So despite the conservative cat, I keep my socialist leaning spirit intact. Maybe I’m not so laughable after all. That is, despite having to clean up a conservative’s litter.

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A Plague of Trilliums

Posted on 24 May 2014 by Larry Russwurm

I was in shock earlier this week when I noticed all the trilliums in this bush. A bus I take goes by this bush and I honestly had never seen so many trilliums. In all directions the trilliums went for the full quarter mile wide length and breadth. The shot I include is more typical than atypical. Sure I wanted a lot of trilliums in the shot to make my point. The biggest difference I noted in the different directions was that the trilliums were on average pointed toward a certain direction. So I took this shot from that direction so more trilliums were facing the camera.

trillium2

Oh, I had seen trilliums many times before when I was growing up. At least three times in my childhood I was walking with a group through the woods and the group would spot a lone trillium or a couple of the plants. I was told at all these encounters that trilliums were the provincial flower of my province, Ontario. As a result it was against the law to pick the flower.

I am only able to interpolate from that trillium scarce childhood to the present day plague of trilliums. Apparently trilliums are a plant where if you pick the flower, the whole plant dies. So maybe there is some truth to the no picking trilliums rule. Indeed, this link gives the rules for picking trilliums.

The way I see it, Ontarians believed the story that picking any trillium is illegal. So instead we picked Jack-in-the-Pulpits, Queen Ann’s Lace, and whatever interesting forest plants we could find. But fearing the law, we all left the trillium alone.

Finally, we now get to see what we created. Because of selective picking, we now have a plague of trilliums. If this over abundance persists every year, I suggest we let the no picking trilliums law be taken off our books. Besides, we might be able to honour this provincial flower indoors and not just on nice days out in the woods.

Last year (2015) I saw no trilliums in this bush and this year (2016) the trilliums are as plentiful as in this picture. I had thought that for plagues of animals and plants there was more of a 7 or 10 year cycle. Apparently not so for trilliums.

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Off Gassing Could Upset the Whole Apple Cart

Posted on 17 May 2014 by Larry Russwurm

You know that new car smell that many of the wealthy love so much? The smell that has even led to the scent being sold in a spray bottle? That smell may be dangerous to your health.

Little study has been done on the health effects of off gassing of plastics and glues, etc. that produce the new car smell. An attempt has been made to rank cars by off gassing, but since they use different materials, this may be an almost futile attempt.

The fact an attempt has been made to rank off gassing tells me there is very likely a problem here. Oh and don’t tell me there is no way to tell. Long term studies should be relatively easy to do because there is a whole class of wealthy drivers who drive only new and recently new cars. There is also a class of drivers that has never owned a new car in their lives.

This is a problem the car companies don’t want you to know about because it could upset the whole apple cart. What if the brand new car were considered to be the worst incarnation (couldn’t resist the choice of words) of a vehicle?

I for one don’t know how warranties would work if the brand new car is considered the worst. But there are a couple of approaches that might work in the off-gassing-is-unhealthy world.

Quite simply the rich might get the poor to drive their new cars for a good 6 months and maybe as long as a year. You know, until the unhealthy off gases are gone. This could have problems. If there were a clash between the rich classes and the poor, the poorer drivers might take it out on the rich owners’ cars. “Whoops, did I sides wipe a guard rail with a car of the 1 percent?”

More likely I expect to see aged and extra aged cars hit the market. They would be more expensive because the car companies would have to store the vehicles while they were busy off gassing.

Don’t forget buses also have the off gassing problems, too. I expect new plastics and glues would be tested on this transportation system of the poor and the smug. Some people are almost exclusively public transit riders. They would be easy to find and test, too.

Expect the name “Oldsmobile” to be worth something again. With that name, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an aged six months incarnation, even an aged 1 year model, and finally an aged 2 years model. Life will go on after the apple cart has been upset.

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The Census Was Such a Primitive Tool

Posted on 10 May 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Alright boys and girls, it’s now time to put on our Conservative Party of Canada thinking caps to discover why that party scrapped the compulsory census.

At first blush, it looked like the Conservative Party might wish to extend privacy in weird ways. But that is such an odd position for the governing party to take – wanting less info about its citizens. Now we know it’s not true, that last year alone the Conservative government coerced the telecom providers to hand over info 1.2 million times.

That’s a large fraction of the country. Based on a projection of a projection of a projection of the last real census data, Canada has over 30 million people. That telecom data might be more invasive and thorough than the long form census information ever was. I think the Conservatives passed up info provided by the census because they see things they like better in this telecom data and other spy sources.

With your Conservative Party thinking cap, digest all the advantages to Stephen Harper and his cronies. The first advantage is all this information is classified unlike with Stats Canada which had to release its numbers and stats to the whole country. The governing party gets the full effect of the stats with exclusivity and the unspoken advantages that brings.

Sure that’s an advantage, but the Conservatives might not remain in power that long.

Well firstly the stats themselves might help bias an election. Secondly we can use a Dr. Phil quote on the electorate: the best predictor of future behaviour is relevant past behaviour. Of the four major parties, the Conservatives, the Liberals, the NDP and the Greens, only the Conservatives and Liberals have ever formed a government. Presuming those telecom stats remain for government eyes only, odds are only the Conservatives and Liberals will ever see them.

Finally, the ruling party can leak relevant info to friends and corporations. Have you ever wondered how the Conservatives managed to out fundraise all the other parties for a long time now? Maybe its a tit for tat operation. Help me fundraise and maybe I’ll keep you in the telecom data loop.

Now taking my Conservative Party thinking cap off, I’m not at all sure this is what the Conservatives are actually doing. But look at the advantages of this telecom spy data. It sure makes sense out of the odd decision to make the census less valuable.

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Why Do Waterloo and Mennonites Mix?

Posted on 3 May 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Waterloo Region is an area in southwestern Ontario known for its Mennonite colonizers. This is especially true in Waterloo and Woolwich township. The colonizers largely came from Pennsylvania, and they and other Germanic Christian sects are sometimes known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.

One wonders why these colonizers’ descendants stay there though. As right from the start there was a push for other views in the area. The county was named Waterloo and so was a town which grew into a city inside the county. What was the problem with this? Well Waterloo is the name of one of the most important battles ever fought. And Mennonites are conscientious objectors who refuse to fight in war time, risking jail and other persecutions instead.

Alright, Waterloo is just a name. Conscientious objectors can live with that. Eventually Waterloo grew and began attracting insurance companies. To this day, Waterloo has thousands employed at Manulife, Sun Life, Economical Insurance and Equitable Life. For its size, Waterloo certainly performs well above its weight with regards to insurance companies. It’s just that this is strange, given the Mennonite heritage.

Mennonites can have strange ideas about insurance. Ranging from normal ideas to it’s simply not necessary. For instance old order Mennonites in rural areas will sometimes have a barn building bee where the community will build one member’s barn in a day. Another capability that sometimes excludes insurance are Mennonite relief agencies which will give relief to other community’s natural disasters. Mennonites are capable people and don’t always have to insure.

The third oddity about Waterloo is its two universities, the University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University. Combined with an accelerator centre, Waterloo has become a technology player. Blackberry founders were enriched enough in the noughties that they could help start a couple think tanks, the Perimeter Institute and the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

So some of the best thought and tech in the country comes from Waterloo? So what? Many Mennonites reject technology and will not have electricity in their homes or vehicles more advanced than a horse and buggy. It’s almost ironic that Waterloo has high tech companies.

And finally, with the Mennonites’ mastery of agrarian life it is very strange that Waterloo County became Waterloo Region and continues to grow quickly in population. Waterloo Region already has 500 000 and is expected to grow to over 700 000 people in the next two decades.

Indeed this might be the final contradiction of Waterloo and its Mennonites. Neighbouring counties are already seeing the influx of old order Mennonites buying farms and continuing their way of life outside of Waterloo Region. Maybe all the Mennonites will flee because Waterloo Region is becoming “worldly”. But I doubt it. Some Mennonites have gotten used to the city life and don’t mind even things that can be initially seen as ironic.

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Death Watch 2025: Biospheres 3 and 4

Posted on 26 April 2014 by Larry Russwurm

When it comes to naming biospheres, Earth is of course number one. It is through the continuation and ongoing regeneration of life that defines a biosphere.

The 1990’s saw the project Biosphere 2 come along where a totally closed off glass building with airlocks and everything was tried out by a strange group with a lot of money. The mission was to study biomes as well as act as a trial for long term space missions.

The first 2 year mission didn’t go as planned. Instead of being entirely closed off as planned, an injured crew member was allowed to leave and return with at least some plastic bags. And something went wrong with the oxygen. It dropped over time so some oxygen was pumped in. Also carbon dioxide levels would fluctuate wildly.

The second mission was only supposed to last 10 months. Only a month in, two members of the first crew vandalized the project from the outside. They opened a double airlock door and three single door emergency exits. They smashed some of the glass as well. It is estimated that 10% of the biosphere’s air was exchanged with the outside.

Basically the two missions of Biosphere 2 were unsuccessful. We did not find that we could make a substitute for Earth’s biosphere, or Biosphere 1.

So now, instead of being safely nestled on Earth, Mars One (the one way trip to Mars) will try Biosphere 3 with lives on the line. And unlike the unsuccessful 2 year Biosphere 2 attempt, the mission will last as long as the lives of its crew which could easily be seventy or eighty years.

And must I reiterate that there is a Biosphere 4? Mars itself might be a working biosphere about which we know next to nothing. Before contaminating it with Earth life shouldn’t we study it? To maybe find out how it works or whether our different biospheres can be made to coexist.

Biospheres 3 and 4 could both die because of Mars One. Without at least showing one demonstration of a working biosphere, Biosphere 3 could be thought of as a slow homicide. The failure of Biosphere 4 or Mars might be even worse than genocide, perhaps we could call it an ecocide. The rush rush nature of Mars One means that there is little time and little will to hammer out rules about the preservation of Mars. More study makes sense.

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Did Bastille Have a Lapse or an Inspiration

Posted on 19 April 2014 by Larry Russwurm

I love the album Bad Blood by the new band Bastille. It’s definitely retro. To me each song sounds like an eighties hit. But whereas those old eighties bands would have maybe one or two hits on their album, Bastille has produced a good album from start to finish.

No my trouble is not with this album. But I bought the double CD complete set. My problem is with the very first song on the second album – Poet.

Dan Smith is the creative force who writes the vast majority of Bastille songs. Indeed, although he is British, his birthday is on Bastille Day which is where the name of the band comes from. But the first time through, reading and listening to the words of Poet, I immediately disliked it.

My problem can be encapsulated by the line, “I have written you down now you will live forever”. I will never agree with this line.

I think the problem is that Mr. Smith is still young and might very well believe his words. Writing down the character of a person could indeed make them relevant years later, but forever is a really, really, really long time. Most cultural vehicles don’t make it past the generation they are a part of. Even some really famous culture won’t make it any further into time than their own generation’s lives. Oh yes there are outliers that do, but if we look at the long term, say a millennium, few words will be relevant to these future dwellers.

I can see something surviving,say the incredibly deductive detective Sherlock Holmes. Or maybe someone represents the culture of our times so thoroughly that they, too, are spared from the trash heap. But someone a thousand years in the future is going to know a lot more about the year 3000 than the year 2000. It is what it is, I don’t think most characters and people will last all that long if they are in a poem.

But what if Dan Smith is not naive? What if this is just his way of picking up sexual partners? “I could write you down and then you would live forever, “ he might say. Then the partner would swoon and Mr. Smith would get what he wanted.

I can write, too, so not to be outdone by young Smith, I should try this method to pick up members of the opposite sex. Of course being older makes me more efficient. Instead of bothering with a full character illustration, I will try a name intensive method of writing. I’m thinking about the begat parts of the bible. Something like this:

Tori dumped me when I took up farting in her presence which begat Trina who I dumped because she couldn’t stop and smell the flowers which begat Iris who begat Ella (no, Iris wasn’t Ella’s mother) who begat Cindi who begat… you get the picture.

If Poet suddenly becomes my favourite song, you’ll know why and wonder where my page of “begats” is.

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Mmmm Zombies

Posted on 12 April 2014 by Larry Russwurm

Zombies have us terrified with their brain eating ways. But we are humans. We always turn the tables on the predator no matter how fearsome they might be. Since zombies are much like us, I think that we must turn to eating zombies to spread enough fear among their kind.

Not only will we terrify them, I think we will have a real win if we take to eating zombies. Allow me to explain.

First of all we will arm ourselves with flame throwers to not only kill the zombies but to also cook their delicious flesh. Only after succeeding in this endeavour will we actually eat them.

We will then, some hours later, defecate the zombie remains and bury it six feet under. Perhaps the remains will spontaneously rise, sometime later. If not, we can say some incantations to make the zombies rise again.

Of course we will still be armed with the flame thrower and will cook that zombie, once it rises again, into a meal for homo sapiens.

I’ve done the calculations. Zombie meat is the greenest of all foods. By that I mean it is the most ecologically friendly of all food. By eating the same zombie again and again, we will leave the smallest carbon footprint possible.

Indeed, this is almost as efficient as the water recycling methods developed for space travel and the space station. Combined with water recycling, zombie eating will help us conquer space.

Naysayers might say that having six feet of ground in space is expensive. But I say, not only is it used for its zombie recycling properties, but six feet of ground also can act as a good shield against radiation in space.

Many years from now some may ask how zombies ended up colonizing space. Future generations will point to this very paper and say that this is how. You are welcome, future generations.

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