Slashdot

Not to be rude, but who are you people? I don't mind fans, and I'm glad you like reading my shit, but last time I checked, I had like six fans, and I knew three of them personally. Now there's a bunch of people.

I don't check my friends/fans/foes/freaks lists very often, so don't take it personally if I haven't friended/don't friend you. I just don't have the time to look through everyone's stuff and see if I want to hear more of what you say (though chances are, if you want to hear what I have to say, I'll want to hear what you have to say).

So yeah, nothing personal, and hi everyone.

--Dan

Why do people keep posting in their journals then deleting them? It makes no sense. I get these messages and go to read and POOF, gone. Oh well.

--Dan

I know this place is where I am,
No other place is better than.
No matter where I go I am,
Proud to be Canadian!

I am, you know I am, I am Canadian!
I am, you know I am, I am Canadian!

I love this country where I am,
This land is where I make my stand.
No other heart is truer than,
The one we call Canadian, Canadian!

Saying

I am, you know (you know I am)
I am Canadian (you know I am)
I am, you know I am (you know I am),
I am Canadian.

I AM CANADIAN!

So I was at The Bakery today, and I came up with a neat idea based on something someone else said, so I thought I'd mention it here and see what people think.

We've seen all kinds of blogs and crap from high and low, people who feel it important to prattle on about their day, knowing that somewhere, there's some loser whose life is so much worse that they think this is the highest possible form of entertainment. How do we know that these things are true thoguh? Well, it's hard to say. But I have an idea that might be more interesting.

Fake people. Or rather, real people writing fake weblogs about fake personas of themselves. If I sat down and logged (well, blogged) the day to day events of my life, it'd be pretty boring. Here's a typical Saturday during the school year, to give you an example.

'Woke up at about 5 AM; decided to stay in bed. Got up around noon and played Unreal II while I ate breakfast. Read slashdot, checked email. No email. Went up to the mall, got a coffee at starbucks, read books at chapters for two hours. Went to EB. Games still all suck. Note all the cute girls in the city, but know that I couldn't get a girlfriend to save my life. Got depressed, went home, and played Unreal II until roommate comes home. Played American Conquest LAN game until I realized the game sucks. Went to bed.'

Exciting, eh? I can just see the hits I'd get on my site if I was posting juicy tales like that every day. But how about this:

'Woke up at about 5 AM again. Was going to go back to sleep, but I had too much to do. Checked stock quotes and mutual funds. Together with GICs, am up $1500 since Thursday. Excellent. Mike and I were invited to a private party in Ibiza on Sunday, so I checked the reservations. Talked to the woman at the airline, found out she's from Vancouver as well. Managed to talk her into upgrades to first-class. How cool is that?. Went up to Starbucks to grab a coffee, invited Kelly to the party, she accepted with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I don't think my charm could get me an upgrade for another woman, so I'll have to pay for this one in full. Oh well, it'll be fun.'

Now sure, that seems a little far-fetched, but it's a rough example. Who wants to read a blog, you say, about someone who's everything they're not? Well, people watch it on TV all the time.

Check out the latest Degrassi thingie - you get a locker, get to write articles in the student paper, and so on. It's like a community, only it's a role-playing community.

Well, what if we had a role-playing community of our own? We'd each pick a persona, and then we'd integrate ourselves into the community of role-players, and we'd interact with them as they'd interact with us. I'd mention the Ibiza party that Mike and I are going to, Mike would mention this cute girl he met at the party when I was chatting up the hostess, and so on. Theoretically, you could even create 'real-world rules' - rules on how to create a character in this fictional world (no oen can be rich, good-looking, smart, successful, and charming all at once - that's just unrealistic. Who would choose to be a jackass?)

Theoretically, you could use some other RPG's rulesets - Shadowrun, for example, or the Star Wars adaptation of 3ed rules - but that might be a bit overdone. It would depend on what people wanted to do, I guess. That aspect would be best served by blogging an actual character's actual RP sessions, so that could be a secondary idea.

So back to the first idea - what if we all created characters, and characters had to be approved by everyone else (or a proportion of everyone else) before they were allowed to join this community. Everything that happened would be fictional, and would be predetermined, just like real life events are. People would be required to stay within the confines of their character (someone with average financial success couldn't up and buy a skyscraper), but large-scale events could be cleared by everyone (average financial success wins powerball lottery). Basically, a fake real community, with real fake people.

It's a rough idea now, and I'm pretty muhc just ranting, but I think it would be a neat idea. The most interesting part, however, would be keeping it real enough that no one would know it's all fake. Could it be done? Could we maintain the fourth wall? Would someone figure it out? It's hard to say.

--Dan

From sql*kitten's journal:

In Italy, the productive North wants independance from the idle South. In Belgium, the hard-working Flemings want to split from the lazy and debt-ridden Walloons. And it cannot be long now before the support grows among the decent folk of the South East for independance from the dead wood in the rest of Britain.

Canada has set up a system in order to, as he put it, 'redistribute the wealth', called 'transfer payments'. The richer provinces pay a certain amount of money, based on their GDP, to the federal government, and that money goes to support the poorer provinces.

Result: Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and BC are paying to support the Atlantic provinces. The money that Alberta earns (and Alberta is freaking rich) goes to pay Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, who apparantly have been pissing it down the drain. When I got to Nova Scotia, I was appalled. There are 50 km sections of paved road (in many places) that has crumbled so bad that gravel or dirt would be preferable. There is a dearth of culture, and layer upon layer of bureaucracy (a friend who works at the local tourist attraction can look forward to weeks of waiting for authorization if he wants to run a perl script on the web server). It's sadly mismanaged, and it's mismanaged with my tax money.

I'm not a fan of the whole separatist ideal - Canada is Canada, it's a family of provinces and I think we should stick together. Still, I'm tired of these provinces being a sinkhole for money that goes only to support the welfare bums of Cape Breton and Newfoundland. I'm not surprised Alberta is talking of separating, really.

The Atlantic provinces hardly hold their own weight, and it's not just hard luck either. The fishermen in Newfoundland knew ten years ago that cod stocks were running drastically low. Yet last month, when the cod fisheries were closed, putting hundreds out of work, it was as if it was some kind of surprise injustice, as if they hadn't been told this would happen ten years ago. But did they listen? Did they bother to look around and try to figure out something new they could do? No, they continued fishing as much as they could, buying $300,000 homes, yachts, cars, and everything else, and now that there's no fish, they're crying to the government about it.

Nova Scotia has discovered huge oil reserves. So they decided that they should be developed. However, since they were too goddamn stupid about it, they sold the rights to a New Brunswick company. Now half the houses in Fredericton have Natural Gas, the most efficient way to heat a modern home. In Nova Scotia, where the pipeline was built, no one has anything. New Brunswick is getting rich, and Nova Scotia is sitting around whining about it.

But don't think New Brunswick is full of geniuses. The federal fisheries minister lowered day quotas on crab fishing, so people aren't allowed to haul up as much. The reaction? The crab fishermen decided to go on strike. They weren't going to haul anything up. In fact, they prevented anyone else from going out there too, so no crab were getting fished. They didn't realize, however, that if they don't bring in crab, they don't get paid. So what do they do? The logical thing: riot. Though no one was injured, four boats, three belonging to the government and one belonging to the Big Cove First Nation, were torched. Along with that, they burned down one of the three fish plants, a warehouse, and tried to burn down the federal Department of Fisheries office.

When I lived out West, I thought that people in the Maritimes were all NDP-voting welfare recipients who never actually contributed to the country as a whole. Now I know they're all right-wing backwater Conservative welfare loonies who don't contribute to anything except the beer industry. I'm fairly certain there's not a useful one among them.

They say better the devil you know than the devil you don't, but I say better to think the devil than to know the devil. When I lived out West, I thought they were useless. Now I know they're counter-productive. They waste their money, and then they waste everyone else's money, and the best they can hope is to stay where they are without falling back down the slope to poverty.

Maybe I sound bitter, but believe me, if you found out that the parts of your country with the most potential couldn't reach that because they have to pay to keep the lowest-potential parts afloat, you'd be upset too. I don't know what could be done about it, other than terminating the transfer payments over time. After all, they're meant to help provinces in need, but only as a hand up, not a hand out. These people should have some pride and learn to stand on their own. Unfortunately, it seems they don't have much of an interest in it.

Maybe it's time we do like BC did to its welfare recipients: start making them prove that they're looking for a job. Make them show us that yes, they have tried to get their economy to be self-supporting, and it's just not working out quite yet, but they're trying. Then I'll be satisfied. But until then, you bet I'm going to be bitter.

--Dan