Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has never done a single thing except to complain about Canada being broken and to vote against everything the government has done or proposed to do to make things better for people. His current platform is just a flip-flop containing a few things he never actually wanted in the past, and he would probably change his tune about them in the near future. I don’t trust him.
Continue readingI’m seeing a lot of Canadian Conservatives make claims about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) being “funded by the Liberals.” In fact, it has existed as a Crown Corporation since 1936 through every single Liberal AND Conservative government. Such people might also be interested to know that it broadcasts just as many Pierre Poilievre (Conservative leader) ads and excerpts from speeches/interviews as anything else. Speaking of Conservatives, why is Alberta Premier Danielle Smith asking Donald Trump for help in getting Poilievre elected? She might as well skip the middle man and ask for Russia’s, China’s, and/or India’s foreign interference more directly.
$100,000 is now much too low of an annual salary threshold for Ontario, Canada’s annual, public sector “Sunshine List.” In 2024, a total of 377,666 public sector employees made at least that much, up from 300,680 in 2023.
Continue readingI have traditionally voted for Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), because that is the political party most closely aligned with my progressive beliefs and values. However, I have recently switched to supporting the somewhat more centrist Liberals, because the flip-flopping of the Conservatives’ Pierre Poilievre from criticizing Canada as being broken, obsessing about axing the carbon tax, and loving/aping Trump to “Canada First … For A Change” (whatever the f$%k that means) is just ridiculous.
Continue readingI’ve now set up a new-to-me computer: a Dell “one litre” mini, but it was refurbished and updated by Canada Computers. That’s just my first step in limiting the amount of money I give to US companies.
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Welcome to The Tower – by Dr. B. (Durrell Bowman, Ph.D.), 2024, 47:05: a Progressive, Pop-Rock, Experimental-Electronic Concept Album about One Person’s Path into and Exit from Higher Education. It’s available for streaming and/or download for $7 Canadian (approximately $5 US) on Bandcamp. You can choose to pay more, if you want to. Some of the eleven songs are new or new-ish, but often evoking certain existing styles and/or artists … especially from, say, 1969 to 1984. (I guess that’s my “Eras!” 🤪) Some of the songs are not so recent (one is as old as high school old!), but re-written with new words and re-arranged. The three weirdest pieces were composition-course projects to which I’ve now added words and vocal effects.
Continue readingI’m still very slowly working on my concept album The Tower (about the various problems with higher education), but I’ve moved beyond “concepts of a plan” to an actual plan. I know what all ten songs are (plus the “bonus track,” which is lyrically only tangentially related to the concept), what 95% of their words are, and what style they’re in. Some are based on much earlier songs and instrumental pieces of mine (but with new lyrics and/or added spoken words), and some are entirely new songs.
It’s going to be very “old school” (say, 1969 to 1984) experimental/electronic music and progressive rock influenced, keyboard-based, classic rock and pop-rock sounding. Parts of it have influences from Tangerine Dream, Supertramp and the Who, David Bowie and Peter Gabriel, Ultravox (probably, contingent on finding certain late-’70s/early-’80s synth and electronic drum sounds), Rush (I like switching into 7/4, etc.), and Laurie Anderson (I’ve figured out pitch shifting, but vocoding so far remains a mystery to me).
I’m using the free (!) Digital Audio Workstation / DAW called Cakewalk, and I use freely available soft synths and other sounds from a variety of sources. Just to give a sense of what this crazy, elaborate type of software is like, here are photos of the first two songs (“Spread Too Thin” and “The Ivory Tower’s Crumbling”), but still without vocals added.
Donald Trump has predictably now changed from saying “Crooked Joe” and “Lyin’ Joe” to “Lyin’ Kamala.” His campaign has no idea what to do except to double down on all of the political lies that are somehow supposed to cover up his misogyny, racism, incompetent business dealings, and felony convictions. On pretty much every issue (abortion, health care, gun control, taxation, immigration and paths to residency, etc.), Kamala Harris is the complete opposite of Donald Trump.
In about one day, she already had the necessary number of delegates on board, her campaign had record-breaking grassroots fundraising, almost every major Democrat had endorsed her, numerous multicultural interest groups were on board, various major unions were on board, and so on. I hope that enough people near the fence (even white, male “soft Republicans”) will do the right thing.
While Trump was a celebrity TV personality on “The Apprentice” (despite his numerous business failures and bankruptcies), Harris was elected as the District Attorney of San Francisco (unopposed for her second term) and then elected (twice) as the Attorney General of California. When he became President, she was elected as a US Senator for California. It will shortly be very clear who the liar is. I predict that Trump will have a series of babbling, completely incoherent meltdowns.
Our union (0PSƏU) reps are having meetings this week with our employer (L1feL@bs) and an arbitrator. About a month ago, we overwhelmingly voted for strike action, if no new deal can be arranged. However, only about a quarter of our drivers have full-time routes, and a further quarter or so are permanent part-time (21 guaranteed weekly hours, with benefits). I assume that most of those drivers usually feel like actual employees.
About half of us are casual/on-call drivers (without benefits) and don’t necessarily get more than two shifts per week, especially outside of the summer vacation period. I’m in the bottom half of the seniority list and probably will be for quite a while. Even a permanent part-time position apparently only comes up once every year or two. Most of our part-time and casual drivers are retired or semi-retired from other things and already have pensions, other retirement savings, and benefits in place from those, not to mention being homeowners. A few of us do not have any of those things. Once my employment insurance top-up from being laid off from my last job ends in a few months, things will get very tough. I guess I need to find a second part-time job.
Our work is important: picking up medical specimens and delivering accumulated bags, sharps bags, empty bags, supplies, and reports (“mail”). A few routes have as many as 70-120 stops, but some of them are multiple doctors’ offices in larger buildings, of which some are report delivery only. Several routes each take many dozens of full bags from the Kitchener-Waterloo/Cambridge/Guelph/Fergus and surrounding area to major facilities in Etobicoke and Mississauga (about an hour or more away, in the Greater Toronto Area), where the specimens are processed. Sometimes, our manager gets stuck at the last minute having to hire a third-party company, which gets paid two to three times more than we do, even though their drivers skip many thing (e.g., sharps, empties, supplies, and mail) and frequently make mistakes.
After only about five months, I’ve already done (or, in a few cases, just been trained on) 14 of our 17 routes. However, even with extensive notes it’s hard to be efficient, stay on schedule, and get one’s breaks in when there can be a gap of up to several months before doing the same route again. Also, all routes have aspects that are illogically arranged and expected stop timings that are impossible, even for the most experienced drivers. My favourite is downtown Guelph to Rockwood back to downtown Guelph to west Waterloo in 52 minutes, including all of the time it takes to do things at these places.
We drive all over the place in all weather conditions and deal with potentially hazardous things all day (anywhere from 8 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.), but we are the company’s lowest paid employees. The company is just being sold, though, and the new owner’s US drivers actually get paid more per hour (in equivalent Canadian dollars) than we do. I hope this week’s meetings will address some of these things.
My songwriting and live performing have converged into using my semi-weighted controller keyboard (which was a gift from Vicky and others some years ago), my DAW (digital audio workstation) software, and numerous virtual instruments and effects. Today, I figured out how to make live song files that map different instruments as splits and layers across 88 keys. There are easier ways to do it, but this way I didn’t have to purchase a digital piano or VST host software. In fact, I didn’t spend anything; even my DAW (Cakewalk by BandLab) was free!
Durrell Bowman 