Ideas Marinating Blog

This was a letter sent to Mr. Smitherman, my MPP regarding Toronto’s new Smart-meters that if without opposition could start infiltrating Toronto homes as early as this summer. Although a good idea in concept, the way they are going at it is as boneheaded as only politicians have the gift to make it.

This is Mr. McGuinty’s plan to have Torontonians save electricity by doing their laundry at ‘off peak’ hours. Like, let’s say 3:00am in the morning.
If you rent than this affects you! Write your MPP, make them earn their lunch money.

Good day Mr. Smitherman,

I am taking this opportunity –my first in fact – to write to you about an issue, which has gravely alerted my attention. Mr. McGuinty’s proposed use of ‘smart meters’ in the city of Toronto, although a good plan at heart, needs to be rethought before it can ever come upon real-world implementation.

Mr. Smitherman, this plan does not take into consideration a landlord’s responsibility to upgrade a tenant’s unit or appliances to the latest most energy efficient models. I would also wager that most would be unable to financially fulfil this task. Further still, once they are no longer footing the hydro bill, it is easy to see their desire to replace them waver even more. Especially if McGuinty allows landlords to mandate their own generic discount on a tenant’s rent. After all, a building does not have to be environmentally friendly or efficient to pass code.

Under these circumstances, if a landlord cannot\refuses to upgrade appliances, don’t you think passing the expense of hydro over to tenants is not only unfair but an obvious lack of environmental concern by Mr. McGuinty and Queen’s Park? It sounds more like a misguided attempt to save a quick buck rather than avoiding an ‘energy crisis.’

So what if this plan comes into fruition? I can only imagine the logistical nightmare of keeping track of the new hardware and the billing system that will surely come with it. Instead of having one bill, now you are going to deliver over 320 to my building alone? How many trees are going to be cut down every billing cycle in order to keep Toronto’s mostly circa ‘80s appliances running? How about the new staff that will need to be hired?

To quote Mr. McGuinty from his April 19nth, 2004 Legislative assembly speech, it is easy for him or anyone to say “That old, inefficient beer fridge in the basement may seem like your best friend at playoff time — but every time you open the door it’s “pay-up time,” because that fridge can be costing you about $150 a year in extra electricity — electricity we can’t afford to waste.” Well, what about when that ‘inefficient fridge’ takes the form of your inefficient heater, or your stove, or your kitchen fridge? These things happen and they are not being addressed, could someone explain why tenants should pay for something they have no control over?

On a different note Mr. Smitherman, why no one ever touches on the fact that we do not need the CIBC tower on the Northwest corner of Yonge and Bloor lit up like a Christmas tree every night? Or what about the Manulife Centre? Or the Eaton Center Tower? Or most of the downtown core for that matter? How many lights does an evening cleaning crew need? Ultimately the key of this enterprise is not to save a buck but to save power, and hopefully save a buck or two meanwhile we are at it. I doubt that my own apartment building at 40 Gerrard Street East could ever compete with the power usage of the Royal Bank plaza at Bay and Front streets, as they have the advantage of their thousands of computers but only a soul or two per floor after 9:00pm.

If we are trying to save electricity why not legislate for landlords, particularly of large buildings and the private sector to implement solar power panels on their roofs for example? Generally, most roofs have gravel and a few pipes, they have the space and it will benefit them in the long term.

What about lower income families? Those very families who happen to live in less than perfect conditions; do you think Mr. Smitherman their landlord would have the funds to fix their drafty windows, bad heating and replace their energy wasting appliances? When that does not happen, whom do you think will be left in the cold when they are not able to afford to live even in those less than perfect conditions?

I am not saying that smart-meters are bad idea Mr. Smitherman, but the way Mr. McGuinty it is going about it definitely proves his $100,000+ a year salary has segregated him and is now out of touch from the average Toronto citizen and father still from someone who is an actual tenant. Where is ‘our’ voice being represented in all of this?

I am expecting a response to see what will be done about this matter. Oh, and if I may, could you be kind enough to email me a response. No fancy paper on regular mail, please.

Thank you for your time,

You can find some other thoughts on the matter if you click to this quick exchange on this forum.

Ah, the opportunity to write a few words on the beauty of not having children. ‘Sure,’ some of you may be think ‘as you get older, you’ll change your mind.’ Well, I would not be too sure about that.

As I get older –29 in July- I have been invited to a few parties in the last couple of years where my girlfriend and I have been the only ones without small children. Wow, after only a couple of hours I could not wait to rush home, flop on the couch, kick my legs up and enjoy…silence, complete and utterly uninhibited silence. Inventors: be aware, if you could can silence, mass-produce it and then sell it, you would be the MVP of Nobel laureates.

It is amazing the squealing that can come out of a two year old, sparing no eardrums in its wave of destruction and early deafness. Now imagine a whole horde of them! Running up and down, left and right, hardly ever running into each other, as if able to hear their shrieks bouncing off furniture and everything else.

Paradoxically, I like children, just not the ones I can’t give back. I enjoy playing with them and I mean with them, and not some sort of twisted mind game of my own Machiavellian design. No who can borrow Daddy’s wallet without him realizing it competitions or my own favourite version of hide and seek, were they hide and I go seek another glass of wine. In fact, I think I would be a great father and nurturer. Just in patience points alone I have managed a good karma trust fund that could be easily used to raise a child. I have just made the decision not to have any.

However, you know what I would like to do? I would like to turn this sucker and point the spotlight at you for a moment and ask you the question: ‘why would you like to have children?’ A lot of people say ‘well, to have a family, of course.’ Now, what the hell does that really mean?

You were once one (partner excluded) and now you have to be many? Concerned the gene pool is getting a little impure and adding a few of your own drops will chlorine it into a grandiose Olympic pool? Nah, no one really thinks like that. Or do you have a need to pass the family flag down the next generation? Or do you want a mini-me version of yourself, doing the same things you did or worse, the things you didn’t get to do. Play the piano, sports, be a pop star or any other lost dream? Millions of parents live precariously through their children every day. It’s a human species pass-time. This scares me the most. That and the rare type of people who use children as bargaining chips, heck one of my best friends had the catch 22 fortune of being born in a family of good stature were her mother’s main intention was to get pregnant to keep her husband from leaving. Yes, good stature, bad marriage.

Now, I am not saying that people should not have children. That is not only outlandish but also outright stupid. No, I would not say that. However it is fair to say people should not assume having children is the end all of all relationships. That is just what is expected of us in our society, nothing more.

At the very least, everyone owes it to themselves including the ‘must have one or two’ in the crowd, regardless of how sure you believe you are, to question the why to the need. It could be that you might want children for completely different reasons than you thought and that is dangerous. At least if I am making a wrong decision I am not dragging a new life down with me, just my girlfriend or whomever I am dating, but she can always leave. Tell that to a five year old: ‘Scram Pete! I changed my mind. Go become feral or something.’

By the way, since the topic of children is what is known as a ‘deal breaker’ in relationship lingo, make sure it gets discussed as soon as it is suitably possible. You don’t want to fall in love only to find you are incompatible in the breeding department.

The more I think of it, the more I am done with children. Perhaps selfishness is the reason guiding us all. Some have the dream of the 2.3 children (Canadian median), the white picket fence, the minivan, and some don’t and I love it. Would a woman change my mind? It’s hard to say, I love my lifestyle.

By the way, I am not a would-be playboy, thinking I will have an endless string of women in my pad forever. Nope my name is not Hugh. Quite the opposite, I would like to settle down just not with kids. There are women who would agree with me out there. Even if most of society and family will continue to remind us that our natural clocks are ticking away, particularly to the ladies. For the most part we have been relegated to outcasts, but notice that we are a growing demographic, so outcast for not much longer.

So, hang there, and enjoy a nice quiet weekend brunch. Personally I am a fan of poached eggs and a good cup of coffee\tea, served on a nice outdoor patio. Ah, life is good.

I think the last time my sister; mother of two got the chance to do Brunch was…well, I am not even sure, it has been that long. I would say at least 9 months before my niece was born. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Before I go, I wanted to add this last thing my friend told me happened to him last year, which reflects society’s awkwardness towards us non-breeders. I remember a short conversation that occurred at their lunchroom between Dwayne, married with two children and Brad, married with none. They are both in their mid-forties with decent paychecks to boot. One drives a minivan and is so busy on weekends that he, as a salesman actually gets more physical rest at work than at home. This is a real story.

‘Do you ever regret not having children?’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Most people have a few kids by now.’
‘You know Dwayne, now that you ask…yeah, I have been thinking about that…’
Voice getting quieter now.
‘…You know, I would easily trade the two houses we rent-out, the four times a year me and Lydia go on vacation, our two convertibles and the freedom of waking up whenever we want just to have the single opportunity to have a few kids.’
Dwayne’s voice quiets down to meet his.
‘…Uh, really?’
‘HELL NO! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? I LOVE MY LIFE!’

Founded in 1670, back when Canada was pronounced ‘Kanata,’ the beaver was the King of the predators and the British and French mocked each other with slurs like: “Aha, you have a funny accent!’ A small HBC rose to become what it has been for more than three centuries: a Canadian beacon, a symbol of national pride, and as of late a company who sold out to an American dandy with a few billions burning a hole in his pant pocket.

When the world is your oyster,’ said new HBC owner Jerry Zucker after the $1.5 billion purchase, ‘you can get bored of oyster juice pretty quickly.’ When asked what the fuck he meant Zucker replied, ‘I decided to start buying history! I am a genius!’ When pressed to stop smoking marijuana on interviews, Mr. Zucker further explained, ‘Now that I own the HBC group, I am officially changing its place in history, and I am writing myself in it.’

After asking Mr. Zucker for a few tokes of what was obviously good cannabis; he continued, ‘they spread insatiably far and wide and without mercy; they were the Starbucks of your early nation. But its history is a sleeper; there are no car chases and nothing ever blows up good. I am going to change all that.’ After a few minutes, it all started making sense. ‘That’s some good shit, Sir,’ said this reporter.

Throughout its history, HBC represented Canada as a mosaic of overpriced wet, smelly furs to just overpriced clothing today. ‘That’s great and good, but I thought for example, what if HBC employees travelled through Canada in helicopters as early as the 1700’s? That makes sense to me, I always wanted to be live in the 1700’s and I AM a certified pilot. I have tons of changes in mind, like why didn’t fur traders use machine guns? They are awesome! If they had used them they would have fought competition off more easily. If that had been the case, then maybe I would not have been able to buy HBC now. Woah, chicken and the egg man, chicken and the egg…’

Watch for HBC’s revised history to hit HBC’s books section as early as this summer.

–This and all Newsbriefs have been published at the University of Toronto’s satirical newspaper The Toike Okie, and/or the even more twisted BruckNews e-zine.–

It is simply amazing! Okay, taking the fact I have become an insomiac is not in question, or amazing. No, not really. But just how much technology is heading in the direction to make sure each single one of us is as interconnected with pretty much everything else. It is 10:00pm, do you know where your friend’s are? You can now, simply check with Google Calendar! We are Masters of our own lives but we are lending the keys to them to Google? We can trust them, right?

On a related note, just today, I was able to see a live shot of the Santorini islands in Greece. No, they were not rehashed pics from earlier in the year. Oh no, that would not have been techie enough. They were pictures taken only 30 seconds before. The catch is it is nightime in Santorini Greece and all you can see aside a few white dots in the distance is darkness. Probably just some people smoking tabacco, or not, but saying to themselves ‘Ah, life is simple here…and good.’ Perhaps completely unaware that I have the power to completely spy on them –assuming it was daylight– from half a world away. Why? Because someone thought it cool to put a webcam there re-freshing every 60 seconds. Sure this has existed for quite sometime, but webcam shots of utterly pitch blackness?

Which brings me to the whole connectivity thing. I mean, Google sent me an invitation to their new Calendar (Beta) project. Sure it is like any other on-line calendar, but it is also incorporated into my email and…ARE YOU READY for this? I can pretty much email my calendar to every single friend I have. How cool is that?
‘Hey guys! There is a party in my Calendar and everyone is invited!’

Now EVERYONE could just with a few clicks know whether I was with my wife, at my yearly prostate check, or at which time I am going to drop by my mistress. Oh, the joy.

Alright, I am NOT married or have a mistress, the point is, aren’t we with our geeky fantasies of being interconnected at breakneck speeds loosing our sense of self along the way?

Not only are we loosing our right to privacy –which is happening daily under many pretences– some may call it ‘security,’ but it seems we are mostly doing it to either satisfy a need to be heard or simple, unadulterated vanity. I believe we are loosing focus of the simplest things in life.

Of course, the irony has not been lost in the fact you are reading these pretty words of mine from a BLOG. However the truth is there. The Medium is the message, eh? An sometimes she\he is a bitch: “You don’t know how to use a computer? You looser!” Albeit we are generally too happy to comply. Since we keep thinking is the next step in human evolution.

I mean, with the craziness of blogs, photoblogs, apps like MSN’s My Space and an army of other tools like Messengers and LinkIn (Meetup.com anyone?), very soon we are going to have choose to either live in the real world where is sunny and be left for technologically dead dinosaurs or jack ourselves in and be part of our society’s early version of a Matrix, yes, like the movie. What a cliched and weird methaphor. How sad.

So, I as sat earlier today, setting up my new GOOGLE calendar, I got a kick of sharing it (free\busy times only) to a few friends. Why just the free\busy times? Well, I do not want everyone to peek fully into my life, or at least that is what I am telling myself. Albeit not from Google Inc, who I am sure are keeping an ever watchful eye, you know, for BETA research purposes. It just reminds me of that scene from the movie: ‘Neo, do you choose the blue pill or the red pill.’

If it was up to me, I would say, ‘Uh, which one is the cool one?’ But until then, I have to admit I am getting hooked to this Gmail calendar, I mean, the thing is bloody useful. Then again, I know that since I work in IT, I am more likely to fall prey to this things than others. Hopefully I will snap out of it soon and go read a good book instead. But in the mid-time use me as an example and save yourselves!