edwards block

“D” in Houston, Texas, one of my loyal readers (server stats show that there are at least four of you on the planet) , has passed a message through the grapevine suggesting that I have been negligent in posting entries in a timely manner. As my last entry – a cynical diatribe on the subject of shoddy journalism – was posted well over a month ago, accusations of negligence (and no small amount of hypocrisy) certainly seem warranted. Therefore, with this post I will undertake to bring my readers up to date.

“Why do you have a blog?”, someone recently asked me. Actually, it was I who asked the question but, apparently true to character, I neglected to answer myself. One significant reason is communication efficiency. I can almost hear your derisive snorting coming through the ethernet cable, but I’m not kidding. I despise the telephone – it’s not interactive enough to hold my attention for more than a few minutes (unless someone is breathing heavily on the other end). It’s sort of the same reason I prefer newspapers to televised news. I like to have some control over what information reaches me, and at what rate it does so. You’ve probably seen it on the CTV news: 15 seconds on the bomb that blew up, but 4 minutes of footage of cranberries floating in a field with an exciting voiceover about the fascinating harvest. Imagine being on the phone with Aunt Sue who is telling you all about her sciatica. You can spin the receiver in one hand while reading Machiavelli, and as long as you grunt once in a while she just keeps going. Let Aunt Sue get a computer, I say. She can read my blog and leave a comment about her neuralgia.

In the old days, I enjoyed communicating with friends through letter writing, but that has fallen off with the advent of e-mail. Using the post, I would write a long letter and mail it, and then await the reply, which might be several weeks. By the time the reply arrived, anticipation made it an exciting event, and a ritual involving reading, tea and cookies would ensure. Unfortunately, I find e-mail inefficiently quick. I might write a nice e-letter to someone, click send and then relax with satisfaction. But often, before I have even finished the last cookie, my correspondent has replied. There is no opportunity for anticipation to build, without which the excitement of reading the reply is often absent.

That’s probably not the main reason, however. There’s something satisfying about cobbling words together into some kind of meaningful order, putting ideas on, um, paper and publishing it for the world to see (or at least “D”, “E” and a couple of my relatives). Another enjoyable part of self-publishing on the internet is the accidental search engine traffic. I find it amusing when someone types, say, “texas, god, democracy” into Google and find themselves looking at one of my socio-political commentaries that are decidedly not what they were looking for. For instance, my web stats show that someone last month typed “circular bed niagara falls” into a search engine and ended up on my site. (I hope it wasn’t the guy who owns that circular bed or I may be facing a libel suit). Other recent phrases were “deep throat absess”, “sunrise poseidon hot tub”, “yorkton tender loving clowns association”, and my favorite, “saugeen hall birthday party lap dance”.

But that’s enough chatter about the medium, I’m not Marshall McLuhan. It’s time for a brief rant.

As my collection of conservative blue socks was getting a bit low (I threw the word “conservative” in here for some excitement in next month’s web stats report), I decided to stop in at a local department store known for providing mediocre products at low prices, in order to stock up. After spending ten minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t find what I wanted, I realised that I was in the boys department, which explained the peculiar sizing. Since I’m digressing, let me just briefly talk about those low-cut socks that all the cyclists and joggers are wearing these days. You know, the ones that barely come above the top of the shoe? Call me yesterday’s man, but I just can’t get used to men wearing those. When I was a kid only girls and limp-wristed members of the chess club wore them, and that image is apparently stuck in my psyche forever. Now, I’m no fan of rigid gender roles, and I’m well known to be missing a bone or two in my own wrists, but a man wearing them just looks girly. I actually bought a pair of them before I went on my bike trip last summer, as I thought they’d be cooler than a full sock, and they were. But whenever I had them on, I felt like I was committing some act of indecent exposure (which is somewhat ironic since most of the city has seen me naked at one time or another), or that some Albertan hicks were going to throw stones at me as I rode past. But enough of that – back to the topic at hand.

I generally try to buy things that are made locally, for a variety of reasons, so I was pleased to see a Canadian flag beside the words “Proudly Canadian” on the label of McGregor® Happy Foot® socks, and I grabbed three pair. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed, further down the label, the words “Made in Pakistan”.

Now, I’m not necessarily averse to purchasing goods made in Pakistan, and I’m not rigid about my local products preference. After all, if I boycotted everything I disapproved of I’d starve to death. But this labeling seems a bit deceptive. What exactly is there about this product that is Proudly Canadian? Is the label made on paper that used to be a Canadian tree? A quick internet search of “McGregor Industries” revealled a possible explanation. It seems that there is a Canadian government program called the “Canadian Apparel & Textile Industries Program” (CATIP) that gave $36,483 to McGregor. Perhaps a condition of the program is that the corporate welfare cases that receive my taxes are asked to put a Canadian flag on their labels.

According to the government’s website, CATIP’s mandate is apparently “aimed at increasing the international competitiveness of the Canadian apparel and textile industries.” It seems that they “increased international competitiveness” to the tune of $26.7 million dollars doled out to the industry (along with another $26.7 million in tariff reductions), during a three year period. I suspect that if we cut out all the corporate subsidies in this country, we could afford to fully fund medicare, and our Kyoto “commitments”, and still reduce income taxes. Good thing we have a new, honest government in Ottawa to clean things up! (Attention foreign readers, and Conservative party supporters: the preceding reference should be considered irony).