Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

Oh baby it’s cold outside. Way too cold. I think when I went out earlier the weatherman said it was about -25c. Gawd I hate the winter. I know, I know… I’m Canadian and by default I’m supposed to love playing in the snow, skiing, hockey skating… everything snow and ice related. Somewhere in my genetic makeup those specific DNA markers went rogue and never took over. I loathe the snow. Sorry, I realise that is terribly disloyal, but I can’t even get excited about the Winter Olympics. Sigh… I want to go sit at an outside cafe sipping lattes and drawing little birds. I want to go out and not have to dress up like Nanook of the North. Know how to tell how old a Canadian is? Count the salt rings on their pants.  Oh god now I’m whining and it’s only January!

To make up for my whining here’s one of my latest little birds for you. I did this Tufted Titmouse during the holidays. I’m using both the classic Staedtler Mars Lumograph B 2B and 6B for the darkest parts of the birds. For the lighter softer downy feathers I’m using Cretacolor Fine Art Graphite pencils 2H HB Fine. The Cretacolor leads are terrific for creating a soft fluffy look and the leads are very durable. I tried some other brands but found the lead tips kept snapping off.  Staedtler and the Cretacolor hold a sharp point beautifully. I haven’t settled on either brand yet, but I’m enjoying a great deal of success in using them. The mechanical pencils were great but using a variety of pencils allows for more detailed and softer sketches. Well enjoy the bird, I’m off to the cafe for a latte and to draw a bit and dream of spring. Oh… spring… outdoor cafes, sunshine and warmth … sigh….

From Catpaw’s Art work – birds

I hate the cold… I also hate head colds. I’m suffering from both and well, I’m just pathetic and miserable at the moment. To fill in time while I’m waiting for both colds to break, I’ve been scooting about the internet looking for suitable tales of terror to rant about. Oh what fertile ground the world can be!

Let’s start with my e-mail. Here’s a part of a letter I received today:

Tired of Hearing:       

: What’s Your Degree in?
: Where did you go to school?
: No Degree, No Job!
: You don’t Qualify for it!
: With a degree we could offer you a higher salary & etc …    

Now you can finally have the Degree You deserve based on your “Life Experience”
No Examination, No Books, No Study      

Prestigious Non-accreedited Degrees
“No one is Turned Down”

Hmmm…. evidently spelling isn’t a required “Life Experience”…. I really enjoyed this email. I worked pretty hard for my  BA(hons) and now … gee.. I could have saved myself the effort and just mailed away for one. No work necessary, no exams, no books, no study. This isn’t a degree folks, this is a useless piece of paper that says “I’m a useless wanker who is too lazy and dishonest to legitimately work for the honour of receiving a degree.” There was a recent newspaper article here in Toronto that exposed a number of people in Ontario who had purchased their degrees. One person even said they didn’t realise it was wrong! WHAT?!! You must be joking… seriously… you thought you could chuck a couple of bucks in the mail and get a degree that is supposed to be equal to the one I spent 4 years getting but without the work or gaining the knowledge that accompanied the effort or the integrity behind doing the work? Get out of here! It says it is NON-accredited which means it is NOT LEGITIMATE… sheesh..

Octomom is too easy a target, I think I’ll leave this pathetic excuse of a human alone. My blood just boils when I think the entire situation. What the hell was her doctor thinking.. oh wait I know – $$$ and damn the consequences. Is the entire sad tale getting creepier by the moment to you as well? When I saw a photo of this person, I thought to myself, she wants to be Angelina Jolie – and don’t get me started on that sad situation. What is it with these people that want to collect children. Whatever happened to old fashioned hobbies like stamp collecting, or coin collecting? Children are not accessories.

Our neighbourhood looks like dog sh*t Hell. Note to dog owners, snow and cold do not make dog poo vanish. It’s still there. And to the person who is letting his large dog poo in the middle of the sidewalk here at my building – I’m hunting for you. And when I find you it’s not going to be nice. And I will find you!

Soccer season here in Toronto will start soon… OH OH OH… I really can’t wait. Seriously – I just can’t wait. It means spring, good entertainment and ohhhh… I want to go to the first game.

Did you know there are 150 items available on Itunes that contain the word fart, including an astonishing number of ringtones, 7 games and 3 utilities. Did I say I have a bad head cold? What else do you do when you feel under the weather, but look up rude things on the Internet.

I’ve filled my MP3 player with the songs I like to hear! I found 33 songs I like to listen too! WHOO HOO! Now what am I going to do with the other 6.7 gigs worth of space.

Did you know there was an Idiot’s Guide to the End of Days and another one for the Apocalypse? Want to know how the books end? Everyone dies.

Sometimes you can’t help but overhear a conversation that has you in stitches. Years ago I was eavesdropping on one such conversation between 2 teens, in a restaurant. It was obvious this was the young man’s very first serious date and he was desperately trying to impress the girl. He was wearing a tie that looked like it belonged to his dad and he kept fussing with it; his jacket was a bit over sized. He was trying to do all the right things, holding out her chair, entertain her with chat, order something nice to drink etc. Their conversation was rather funny – he was telling her all about how camouflage works, except he kept pronouncing the word camelflage. Don’t know if the girl realised the slight mispronunciation, but if she did she wasn’t letting on. Whenever I get too cynical about humans, I think as long as there are young boys willing to get clean and tidy for girls and take them out and young girls who are enthralled about a conversation concerning camelflage, well then the world will be okay after all.

If you are feeling all warm and fuzzy now, I have the perfect antidote: the British government has backed down on it’s pledge to prevent the banks from dishing out HUGE bonuses to their inept, corrupt and incompetent staff that helped create this huge economic fiasco. They will continue to be rewarded for malfeasance and incompetence. I thought bonuses were given for performing your job well, not flushing the economy down the well. Silly me. But hey, on the upside, at least we know who’s purchasing all those Internet degrees.

Speaking of the economy, nice to know all those de rigour business ethics classes were so effective.

On that happy note, my head cold and I are going back to bed.

I kind of wrote myself dry before the holidays. I kept looking at the blog during January and discovered I didn’t have a single thing to contribute.

How odd was that?  Part of it was the unrelenting cold and snow. I was sitting at my computer about 4 weeks ago and looked out the window. It was snowing and I thought, I’m going to go to bed and not come out until spring. I actually went back to bed that day. No, I haven’t been there everyday since. Mentally maybe, but not physically. The weather finally broke, and it feels downright spring-like. I know it won’t last, but once you get that whiff of warmer weather, hope returns.

Now don’t worry about me getting overly optimistic, or anything so foolish. I have a tick list of things that have been annoying the living hell out of me and will write about them in due course. The list?

• The damned Charmine Bears – redux
• The unmitigated greed that has driven the economy into the ground
• Short term memories about past economic fiascos
• Migraines
• The F&*cking dogs that bark ALL THE ^&%ing time down the hall and upstairs
• Irresponsible dog owners that don’t stoop and scoop after their precious bowser drops a large one on the sidewalk. What? You think it vanishes just because there is snow on the ground?
• One woman’s contribution to gross overpopulation
• Stupid criminals
• More mutterings and mumblings on the economy – hey it’s an easy target

… and many more thoughts that I’m just too lazy to write down. Oh so many annoyances, so little time to rant.

Right now I’m going to go and hide somewhere. The fine folks that own my apartment building are repairing the plumbing yet again. Not sure why but that always means drills, jackhammers (or a reasonable facsimile of one), banging and thumping. After 5 hours I’m now in desperate need of peace and quiet. Add on top of the noise, the usual barking from 2 sets of dogs. On the upside, the jackhammering that took place between 2am and 5am everyday (including Saturday) leading up to Christmas (across the road) has stopped until March. Sweet blissful silence at night. AND the drilling, hammering etc on our building to repair a major crack in the outer wall was completed before Christmas. That means 2 things, no more jackhammers against our wall and NO FLOODING this spring. Yuppers, we had flooding here on the 20th floor. Not a pretty site.

Well, that’s all for today. Be back in a day or two.

Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) down in Oshawa are blockading their soon to be defunct GM truck plant. GM recently announced they are closing the gas guzzler plant in 2009 and gave layoff notices to all the workers. Seems the economy won’t support these behemoths anymore, and the public is telling GM with it’s wallet – the trucks just don’t sell in the numbers they used to. I read sales are down as much as 39% in the last year – this was BEFORE the huge gas price hikes here in Ontario. The truck/SUV crunch is so bad, GM is closing not just the Canadian plant but the ones in the US and Mexico. So what are the workers doing? Saving their pennies in anticipation of layoffs? Looking for employment? Pressuring for aid in creating new jobs? Going to work so they can save their pennies? Not on your Nellie! They are blockading the plant so no work can occur. Bright bulbs down there eh? The CAW wants GM to keep the plant open to 2011 and are using strong arm tactics to make this happen, there was even talk of a strike (oh wouldn’t that make the GM management happy, fewer pay-cheques!) and now the union is promising “We’ve got all kinds of things up our sleeves”. My mind shutters at such nonsense talk. The plant is losing a ton of money, and there is no market for the product, so let’s keep making the trucks so they can sit on a lot, rusting in the Canadian weather. Good plan there folks. Lots of forward thinking.

The time of the big truck has passed. All this stupidity being spewed about forcing the company to keep the plant open won’t help. The jobs are gone, it’s time to move into another sector. Yes I realize your next job won’t pay as well. I had a hard time pinning down how much the workers were making down there – anywhere from $35 for entry level jobs to $70hr for experienced workers. All I know is this is way too much money for unskilled labour. Nurses get paid less than CAW members get paid – to me that is just nuts. I got into an argument with a CAW supporter last week, and he kept saying well they work hard for their money. And the rest of the world doesn’t? Are you telling me a night shift nurse doesn’t work hard? Tell that to them at 7am after a full night. I think the average nurse might just want to rip you a new one. You want to work hard? Go work in a restaurant waiting tables – you don’t even get paid minimum wage and the tips often don’t bridge the gap. Let’s not even discuss the level of abuse you take as a waiter/waitress. THAT’S HARD WORK! This argument makes me see red. CAW members were grossly overpaid, and while that is not the driving reason for the truck sales drops, it sure hasn’t helped.

I feel for the families that are going to be out of work in a year. I also feel for the spin off job loss that will happen. BUT, the writing was on the wall a long time ago. These big, inefficient vehicles, manufactured by the same company that thought the HUMMER, Civilian Crusher Version, was a great idea, are too expensive to run, and chuck way too much pollution into the air. Do you really need a 1/2 ton truck to go pick up milk and cookies at the store? People are concerned about pollution and gas prices. As someone who has suffered through many pollution alerts, I am not shedding a tear for this change in the public attitude. It has been too long in coming. Either we change our habits, or we die. Smaller, more fuel efficient cars that don’t send as much pollution into the air will only benefit us, not hurt us. GM didn’t listen and now it’s paying the piper.

I’ve been reading the editorials and am fed up with the whining and complaining about people buying “crap foreign, Asian cars” instead of Canadian trucks. Wake up you jackasses! GM is not a Canadian company, nor is Ford or any of the rest of them. As for crap? I think the little cars won the battle because the companies LISTENED TO THE BLOODY MARKET! Instead of being inflexible and saying Americans won’t buy small, the Japanese car makers set up car plants here in Canada and have been slowly expanding ever since. Their marketing people looked at the same stats that the Big 3 American car makers looked at and interpreted them correctly. They saw a need for fuel efficient cars and filled that need. What did GM and the rest do? Kept churning out gas guzzlers. Big, dangerous gas, guzzlers. Not hard to guess who is winning the battle?

So CAW, don’t even think of trying to get the Ontario government to strong arm GM into keeping a money losing plant open. This will be a huge waste of tax payers money. Money better spent elsewhere, like on our struggling farmers, poor working class, hungry children in low income families, FLIPPING SCHOOL BOOKS, anything but a damned bunch of trucks that shouldn’t be on the road to begin with. How about being creative instead? Ask for funds to set up alternative employment – oh yes and this also means no more big pay cheques, and welcome back into the real world. Stop screaming for an unrealistic goal and plan now for the future, cause it’s roaring up in your rear view mirror right now.

Not one of my more lucid moments this morning. Tried to log onto my blog and kept getting the dreaded

404 Not Found

We’ve either moved ‘ /dairy or deleted the page. Sorry.

Kind of made my blood run cold. I thought, Hmmm I paid my bill, I know I posted there…. damn what’s the problem. Logged onto the server and yup I’m okay. Logged back onto my blog and still

404 Not Found

We’ve either moved ‘ /dairy or deleted the page. Sorry.

Much rudeness and cursing followed. Was not happy. Cursed some more. Banged the keyboard in frustration.

THEN THE LIGHT WENT ON!

I had typed in catpawsblog.com/dairy

I’m off dairy products now and my temper has improved.

Nothing like an embarassing typo and a touch of lactose intolerance to throw your morning off.

Yes, I am. I’m going to crawl under the bed and hide until spring arrives.

We have yet more snow – the second big storm this week. Right now we are in the midst of a HUGE storm.

Saturday afternoon and its too miserablely snowy and windy outside to go anywhere. We are enduring another winter storm warning – this particular bugger started yesterday and will only get worse with an expected 11 inches of the dreaded white stuff! We already have enough snow. It comes up way past my thighs in places – okay, I’ll concede my thighs are built very low to the ground, but you get the idea.

Truthfully, I can’t remember a winter here in Toronto where so much has fallen. It just isn’t ending. It’s March – we usually get a few little storms and the snow promptly melts. But it will never end.. never… the wind, the snow… the cold… When will spring arrive?

Please… someone send me some warmth and sunshine.  The balcony is covered in snow and the visibility is nil up here.

I want to turn the heat off and open up the windows and feel the fresh spring breeze rush through the place.

I want to wake up to a warm spring sun and the daft little bird that that can’t tell time and chirps before dawn.

I want to go for a stroll without first having to put layers of cloths on.

I want to walk without slipping on the ice.

I don’t ever want to see mittens again.

I also want a big burrito with all the fixins’ but this damned snow is preventing me from going to my favourite Mexican restaurant.

Bugger winter….. damned ancestors, couldn’t they have migrated somewhere warm?