HiR:tb Toots (@warwalker)
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By junior on April 3, 2008, at 8:04 pm I love it when virtual communities act like real communities and come together to achieve a common purpose. The special joy I have from this phenomenon is enhanced when the virtual community uses the everyday technology tools at their disposal to achieve their ends. For that very reason, I spent some time a couple of years ago scambaiting; it was fun using teh Intarwebs to interfere with fraudsters, and I’d like to take the practice up again some time. I kept a diary for a short while about my scambaiting adventures; sadly, I kept getting some momentum going in a scambait and then running into work-related madness that kept me away from my victims. It was a fun little pastime, and there were a couple of bad guys who ended up getting arrested as a result of the work my fellow scambaiters did at www.419eater.com.
Here’s another great example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, though: in Calgary, an online car enthusiasts’ community has located a vehicle stolen from one of its members. As reported in Wired, the thief in question swiped a rather distinctive Nissan Skyline GT-R – the vehicle in question is a right-hand drive model imported from Japan. The owner of the vehicle thought the car was gone, but posted a description of the unique vehicle in the car-buff forum he frequented, along with a description of the (also) distinctive looking thief, who was missing the middle two fingers on his left hand.
Sure enough, a moderator from the forum by the name of James Lynch spotted the car a day later and then did some awesome detective work:
“I pulled out my camera, but I wanted to see his hand, so I did the rock out sign,” Lynch, 22, told Wired.com, referring to the splayed finger gesture that’s ubiquitous at heavy metal concerts. “He did it back and I saw his hand. I rolled down my window and yelled, ‘Nice stolen car!’ He’s like, ‘It’s not stolen,’ ”
The suspect sped off in the turbocharged 400-horsepower car at more than 100 mph, almost running off the road in the process. “He’s a lousy driver,” said Lynch, who decided chasing him wouldn’t be wise. Instead, he called the police and posted the suspect’s picture at Beyond.ca.
Two days later, using tools like Facebook and Google maps, along with some old-fashioned gumshoe work, the community had found the car and local police soon arrested their man. Bonus: there’s video of the thief (dubbed “The Claw” by forum habituees) posted on youtube.
By junior on April 2, 2008, at 9:16 pm So the hockey gods, having recently accomplished their purposes – to maximize the suffering and anguish of devoted puck afficionados – have tossed away the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans like a sullied and broken plaything. Having breathed the breath of false life into the Leafs’ season, fanning the flames of hope into a five-alarm fire with a dramatic comeback victory over the Flyers and then smashing the aspirations of Leaf fans on the hard rocks of reality, the hockey gods must surely have been profoundly invigorated, as they seem to have a pair of new apples in their malevolent eye: the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres. Click here to continue reading A stranger’s just a friend who hasn’t kicked you in the crotch yet.
By junior on April 2, 2008, at 8:23 pm You may recall the first annual HiR:tb Saskatchewan Roughriders Poetry Contest. We have a winner. The winning entry was  submitted by Roland Taylor, curator of the only known collection of the sonnets of Havingevoofer Trauserkov, the noted Russian composer, renaissance man and jack-of-all trades. Trauserkov’s sonnet, penned long before the founding of the CFL, appears to have brilliantly presaged the advent of an adoring green-and-white public dedicated to the football success of the Green Riders:
This Game at large is a mild man’s strategy
To push formed leather and make a score.
The Players battered, no longer fit but sore
We, rising from our soft seats, dream to avoid Tragedy.
In boisterous voice, no cause for Perfidity,
This Game, twelve men on twelve
With scores of threes, sixes and Sevens,
To it, we raise our cheers for good celebration,
A happy joyous roughrider nation.
Our farms with darkest soils give birth
To golden crops are harvested year after year.
And after, in sun and rain, in dark and snow,
We watch, hands clasped, breath held firm by one and all
We cheer, the One who, arms outstretched, catches the ball.
Clearly, as a poet, Trauserkov made one hell of a composer. Born without a sense of smell and with a profoundly impaired sense of direction into a family of itinerant Austrian clowns, Havingevoofer was orphaned at a young age by a disastrous seltzer-bottle accident. Trained as an accountant, he was then engaged through a mixup of forms to work as court composer to a delusional lunatic who believed himself to be the insane King of Germania and who therefore kept his “true” identity (not to mention Trauserkov and his works) jealously concealed. Trauserkov’s works and reputation seem to have largely faded into the mists of history following his death in 1867 at the age of 117 (reputedly from syphilis). A little-known but very loud group of rockers known as the Heroes in Rehab have been the principal force keeping the legacy of the genius Trauserkov alive by championing his works and – from time to time – arranging their own compositions to conform to Trauserkov’s own exacting notions about the relation between the components of musical expression.
By junior on March 30, 2008, at 10:27 pm I know this is getting comical, but I just don’t have the time to post the Roughrider poetry contest winner tonight. With a little luck, an easterly crosswind and a downhill lie, I’ll get it posted tomorrow night.
In the meantime, I need to tell you about my trip to Paris today. Like most people, I went to Paris for hardware. In particular, I went to the Canadian Tire in Paris…
What’s that?
Oh. No, not that Paris. Paris, Ontario. It’s really quite close by. You can also travel to Scotland and Dublin by car from here. It’s quite confusing.
Anyway, I brought my camera because Paris is actually quite charming, and I suspect quite photogenic; this gave me the perfect excuse to wander around and practise my newfound photography skillz while in the big city. On my trip there, I passed the following sign, which sign I have had to drive by every day for the last two weeks. Since my camera was in the car and on the seat next to me, I couldn’t resist clicking off a shot or two:
Now you would think that, being in the real estate business, a person might have occasion to come across the word “development” from time to time, and that – even if only by osmosis – a person might end up knowing how to spell it. At the very least, you would think that once you pounded in the stakes and nailed this puppy up, you might stand back, scratch your head a little and say, “Damn, something don’t seem right. Somebody get me a dictionary.” It’s kind of like being a baker and telling people you make “braid” for a living.
I am my father’s son. Like him, this butchering of the language grates on me and I can barely keep myself from crashing through the underbrush with a bucket of paint to start blotting out extraneous letters.
Maybe the Century 21 people are too busy being concerned about what the hell they’re going to call their company in 92 years when suddenly they (by virtue of their company’s name) are no longer the futuristic, robot-owning flying car pilots of the real-estate world and have become instead essentially Model-T enthusiasts with astonishingly ugly gold jackets. Deal with that developement!
By junior on March 28, 2008, at 11:41 am
By junior on March 27, 2008, at 7:24 pm With apologies to Don McLean – not the guy who sits next to Don Cherry on HNIC, the singer/songwriter – I give you an ode to another lost season:
Bye, Bye Mr. Peddie Bye Bye.
Not a long, long time ago…
I can still remember
How that jersey used to make me smile.
And I knew if they had their chance
The Leafs could make the damn puck dance
And maybe hold a late lead for a while.
But February made me shiver
As crucial points were not delivered.
Bad news on the scoresheet;
I couldn’t take one more defeat.
Well, I can’t remember if I cried
When we lost eight zip to a Panthers side
Whose hockey skills I must deride.
The day the season died. Click here to continue reading With apologies to Don McLean.
By junior on March 26, 2008, at 10:15 pm JUNIORVANIA (AP) – Senior officials in the Juniorvanian Ministry of External Affairs and Department of Homeland Security tonight confirmed rumours running rampant in this tiny hillside country that the nation was nearly overrun earlier this evening by a hostile army of four-legged intruders bent on destroying the natural beauty of the homeland. The aliens in question have been thought to target in particular the attractive and apparently delicious euonymous plants scattered throughout the Juniorvanian countryside. Nervous residents have, in recent week, been cautiously eyeing the many unexplained footprints littered throughout the snow covering certain grasslands adjacent to the southern border.
An unidentified source within the Department of Homeland Security, speaking on condition of being given a free Payday bar, confirmed that as many as fifteen to twenty unidentified intruders (pictured below) roamed across the lands immediately adjacent  to Juniorvanian borders at approximately 7:05 p.m., right around the washing up after dinner hour. In an official statement released shortly after 10 p.m., the Glorious Leadership pointed out that these obviously aggresive interlopers were quickly spotted by an alert lookout posted and trained to deal with just such a threat to national security, and that appropriate steps were immediately taken to diffuse the threat, though the local authorities declined to specify what actions in particular were deemed necessary. Although critics of government policy point out that the beasts in question appear to be harmlessly grazing on vegetable matter in the available photographs, official-looking people with expensive suits and a very busy demeanour dismissed these criticisms as helpful to the enemy and possibly treasonous. “That’s helpful to the enemy – and possibly treasonous” said Juan Gohoam, a spokesman for the Glorious Leadership and part-time cobbler. Nevertheless, anti-government sources speculate that the action plan set in motion upon receipt of the alert included opening a window and watching in quiet wonderment until the terrible beasts became bored of looking at the crazy people hanging out of an open window in the middle of winter and simply moved along.
Mr. U.R. Kidd-Enmie, Chief Padishah of the Department of Homeland Security, took the opportunity to remind Juniorvanians everywhere that although there was  no need to panic, it certainly couldn’t hurt in the least to do so, as that would make it far easier for the government to justify the ridiculous expenditures on “security and defence related” planned by government as part of the upcoming budgetary process. “Tonight, these strange creatures spared us the intense pain of a gentle gnawing that only complete herbivores can inflict ,” he said, “but we might not be so lucky next time. We might be mistaken for a bucket of ferns, for example, or it might be rampaging dinosaurs or berserker robots that appear from within the adjacent woods.” Citizens, however, were reminded to panic an orderly and respectful manner, only in the approved and pre-designated areas, and were asked to refrain from generating any unnecessary noise, litter or unsolicited opinions. Also, the government reminded would-be panickers to refrain from breaking any of the really nice stuff we might like to use in the future, and suggested instead that civil disobedience and abject fear of extinction might best be expressed in the form of an interpretive dance or haiku.
Juniorvanian defence forces – consisting at this time largely of a fifteen year old one-eyed dog with no tail and a profound desire to make friends – remained on alert level fuchsia for most of the evening, except when yummy cookies were distributed on the living room floor, and when American Idol was on because that’s prime snoozle time.
Government officials would not comment on suggestions that tonight’s encounter was related in any way to weekend sightings of numerous winged creatures within the borders of the country. Some commentators have suggested that the small flying intruders noted recently by many citizens may act as spies and informants for their larger mammalian masters; the Science Ministry, however, is reputed to be too busy looking up the meaning of the word “herbivore” to be able to respond meaningfully to such inquiries at this time.
By junior on March 26, 2008, at 12:34 pm I highly recommend e‘s review of Dave Bidini’s Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places.
It seems kind of silly to review a review – how many layers of abstraction can people tolerate, after all – so suffice to say that e managed to put her virtual finger, very eloquently, on an interesting feature of Dave Bidini’s writing. The type of thing she’s talking about in her review – a fundamental ambivalence about the subject material that lies at root of Bidini’s relation to his subject – is exactly the notion that I had wanted to explore in a review of Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs – but which (on account of my laziness and lack of facility with the English language) I have yet to produce.
By junior on March 25, 2008, at 8:27 pm Quickly, a few things.
Today was the occasion of the first commute to work since the great migration. I have to confess I had some anxiety about this aspect of our move; formerly, we were able to log a twenty minute door-to-door trip to get to work, which definitely had its advantages (I can almost hear Mike comparing his own daily trip, jaw dropped in wonder that anyone would willingly prolong their daily travels as Spouse and I have done.) Anyway, our daily trip figured to be anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour each way. Knowing how long others commute each day, I felt a little silly even thinking about it, but I still wondered how Spouse and I would react to that kind of change to our daily routine – I guess it was a little “fear of the unknown” kind of thing. Anyway, our maiden voyage to the salt mines clocked in at just under 50 minutes from the moment that we got in the car in the driveway. That includes a couple of minutes to get the People’s Transportation unstuck from the glorious frozen Juniorvanian mud in the driveway (we had quite a cold spell move through the area overnight), and time spent walking from our parking space to the Building of Endless Toil.
Bottom line: it wasn’t bad at all. Spouse and I were both breathing a little easier, I think, when we proved to ourselves that we could do it and that it wouldn’t be that painful. This travel time is a price we can pay for the pastoral beauty of residing in Juniorvania.
The unpacking/home arranging is coming along apace. Spouse and I were making some changes in the mud/laundry room on Monday afternoon that involved putting up some shelves. Knowing that the People’s Department of Public Works would be so engaged on Monday, Sunday was spent largely in a frantic search through all available unpacked boxes for the cordless power drill/screwdriver set that I got for Christmas a couple of years ago. Monday was the day for this gift to truly shine, but its whereabouts were sadly unknown. I exulted Sunday night, and I’ll admit it, I even danced around a little bit in the kitchen when my multiple Cousteau-ian descents into the packing cartons jammed in our storage room were rewarded and I was able to locate the errant power tool. Joy quickly turned to despair on Monday afternoon when I realized that the battery pack that drives the thing for some reason now holds only enough charge to drive approximately 1.5 inch and a half long screws. Change of plan, power tools are for wimps, time to go the manual route. Click here to continue reading Life in Juniorvania
By junior on March 21, 2008, at 10:44 am …and re-attached itself to the Grid! It lives! In, according to Spouse, disgusting Smell-o-Vision™!
I see that during my period of un-connectedness, the spam fairies have paid a visit in the Comments section. Note to self: have senior technicians at the Juniorvanian Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) get on that little problem. The People demand an effective spam filter!
The migration to Juniorvania is now complete. That is, the actual migrating is complete; the People’s Department of Public Works has been otherwise very occupied with many local improvements, what with the the packing, the loading, the unloading and the unpacking (Monday and Tuesday), not to mention the second round of unloading and unpacking (Wednesday – we received a shipment of items that have been kept in storage for us until such time as our national borders could accomodate them). Since then, the Glorious Leadership of Juniorvania has been attempting to improve the quality of life in the Homeland by removing entirely certain mountains (apparently constructed largely of cardboard and packing paper) that seem to have recently arisen in the area. One such range, located in the middle of what is supposed to be our living room, is pictured below:
I believe I have had a flash of brilliant insight in the course of the move. Rather like Sir Isaac Newton and his discovery of the principles of gravity, this insight came to me while I was engaged in one of my many trips to the trash and recycling bins. It is the first discovery of what I hope will be a very productive Juniorvanian Science and Technology Ministry. I shall call this revelation “Junior’s Principle of Relative Geographic Significance”. It is a theorem that explains why an otherwise rational person would go to the time and expense of transporting an object from one place to another, only to discard the said object completely. Empirical observation: in the course of a move, while packing things away at the initial location, a person can hardly bear the thought of parting with certain treasures collected carefully (or perhaps otherwise) over a lifetime. Yet upon arrival at the ultimate destination, imbued with a sense of fresh possibility – resolving to implement new systems, new (and better!) organization, and to suffer less clutter – certain of these treasures reveal themselves to be of somewhat less than stellar quality. They are thrown out in the trash, recycled or donated to charity. Conclusion: When engaged in a move, certain items selected for transport will undergo a mysterious physical transformation while in transit: beloved artifacts in one locality will become simple refuse in another. Clearly, more research is needed; at this time, for example, we do not know what proportion of items transported from place to place will be transmogrified, nor do we understand the mechanics of the metamorphosis. For now, we are left with but a window into one of the beautiful mysteries of this universe.
Keeping this principle in mind, I offer a real-life (though perhaps rather extreme) demonstration of the principle, involving an actual item unloaded from the moving van and imported into Juniorvania. An object bearing the following label was unearthed in our living room this morning by the People’s archaelogists.
Here it is in situ, with the label from the movers clearly visible:
I make no moral or normative judgements about the presence of this relic. Whatever it was when it was placed upon the moving van, it is now simply “scrap wood.” It has become what it is, and now it – along with many other things – is here in Juniorvania. We have resolved to preserve this object for the purposes of further scientific inquiry.
I will post another update about the move either later today or early tomorrow (and the poetry contest, I think we have a winner!). For now, there are Great Projects to be accomplished lest we risk fomenting unrest among the people, as it seems that the tasks of the Glorious Leadership are many.
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Roll of Blog
The Barilkosphere
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My Review: Great Review
I highly recommend e‘s review of Dave Bidini’s Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places.
It seems kind of silly to review a review – how many layers of abstraction can people tolerate, after all – so suffice to say that e managed to put her virtual finger, very eloquently, on an interesting feature of Dave Bidini’s writing. The type of thing she’s talking about in her review – a fundamental ambivalence about the subject material that lies at root of Bidini’s relation to his subject – is exactly the notion that I had wanted to explore in a review of Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs – but which (on account of my laziness and lack of facility with the English language) I have yet to produce.