The Office (such as it were)

A FEW WEEKS AGO, THE LOVELY CES WROTE A VERY REVEALING POST ABOUT HER WORKPLACE, FEATURING TONS OF SCENIC PICTURES AND STUFF.

I was quite taken by this intimate look into her work-life. I thought it was daring, very open and told us a lot about her that we didn't already know, which I think is a good thing.

Unlike Ces, however, I don't have my own fancy-schmanzy office where I can just close the doors and take all my clothes off, if I wanted to. No, I work at a newspaper, in a wide-open newsroom.

By most standards, it's probably about a decade behind the times. We are all in pods, separated by silly little structures you could knock over quite easily, walls that are pretending to offer privacy.

On top of that, our newspaper, far more than a century old and the largest in our city of about three-quarters of a million people, was bought in the past few years and we have new management.

A recent and disturbing development has seen our management become panic-stricken, as everywhere else, by possible terrorism. We now have security cameras and must wear ridiculous ID badges.

People are fidgety all over -- even at our newspaper, which used to inhabit an historic building downtown but which several years ago moved into a new building way out in a god-forsaken industrial area.

That's sad.

What all this means is I do not and did not have the freedom to just take a bunch of snapshots, freely, in our newsroom. So I can not be as revealing as Ces was in her post.

On Wednesday morning, having brought my Sony SureShot to work, I looked around in all directions and couldn't see too many people taking notice, so I snapped the following shots.

Do not report me to the Homeland Security people or whatever they're calling themselves. I may be arrested.

This, folks, is basically my workspace.



Note the antiquated Apple machine that I am forced to work on when I'm in the office. It's being propped up on an old telephone book.

Note also my antiquated beige courduroy jacket, given to me by a former girlfriend before she dumped me. I get teased quite a bit about that.

I also draw your attention to the fashionable flooring, the WW garbage can, the reams and reams of books I keep on hand that I never have or will read and the posture-correct chair that gives me back pain.

Note also the funky white telephone cord going with the black phone.



This is simply the same workspace, showing my desk and cabinet in its impressive entirety, plus my cell phone, tape recorder, file cabinets I fear not looking in and the fantastic array of books, plus my bag.


The shot on the left, if it actually and miraculously ends up on the left of this type, is simply a closeup of all my books, such as Lacrosse for Dummies, the National Hockey League record and guide book and the Winnipeg phone book.

Note the tool of my trade, a pen, plus a big piece of white paper in case I actually am forced to take notes.

There's also a half-used packet of pepper there from some previous lunch, but I don't know if you can see it.



On the right, I think, is a closeup of all my most intimate work things...free coffee mugs and a blue football that I sometimes grab and throw at unsuspecting business and entertainment writers not far from where I sit.

I tease them all the time. We sportswriters have a reputation to maintain, after all.






This, really, shows nothing I haven't already shown you, except my barely operating computer mouse and a copy of today's paper.

But it gives the post physical balance, because I have only one more picture to show you. And it displays my unique phone from which I can neither transfer calls or accept transferred calls.






This photo shows two things: First, it shows, in the top half of the picture, the south end of our newsroom.

It also shows all the useless crap I have pinned to my screened artificial wall that I have to peer over to talk to my boss.






I hope you have enjoyed this tour of WW's workplace environment. As a parting note, I will have you know it is situated on Mountain Avenue in Winnipeg. There are no mountains in Winnipeg.

How did this come to be?

In Part 2, I will illustrate my home work environment, which is where I wish I could do all my writing. Please do not send any letters to the editor about this post. Just be glad you don't work in this building.

My Beer Can Baby

YOU MIGHT REMEMBER HER...

I posted about her Dec. 12, a Chinese woman I thought, who I see from time to time riding around on a bike with plastic bags hanging from the handle bars and the rear wheel, going into garbage bins and recycling containers.

Well today, after working all weekend, was a day off. And I was taking out my own recycling and there she was, perched precariously on the seat of her bike in -25 temps, leaning over the giant garbage bin, poking around with a long metal rod, searching.

I decided to approach her. I had worried, back with my original post, whether I should because I didn't want to hurt her pride or embarrass her or possibly scare her. But I called out "Hi" and she looked right at me and got down off her bike.

She had her white scarf wrapped around her face, as she had that day, which was not nearly so cold. Her face was brown and weathered, almost like leather. I couldn't see the smile on her mouth, but her eyes were smiling.

I asked her what it was she was looking for. She couldn't speak a word of English. She brought out from one of her plastic bags an empty can she had fished out. We drink plenty of pop at our place so I offered her all of the ones I was going to recycle.

She looked through them and shook her head, no. After a few minutes, I finally figured it out: she only takes beer cans, presumably so she can return them to the beer vendor for a refund of 10 cents a can or whatever.

I don't drink beer. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. She smiled back, put her hand on her heart and shook my hand. I went back inside my apartment to get more recycling but when I came out again, she was already gone.

I wish I could have taken a closeup picture of her.

I still don't know why she chooses to do this or whether it's her only means of bringing money in. And I don't know what she does with the money she gets from these beer cans. But she sure has a nice smile.

D-D-D-D-DEEP FREEZE

THERE'S COLD...

THEN THERE'S C-C-C-C-COLD.

It was -48C with the windchill when I woke up Friday morning in Winterpeg.

Biting. Numbing. Deadly. My boss refused to let me drive 2 1/2 hours to Kenora, Ontario, to do a story on that town's 100th anniversary of winning the Stanley Cup.

All school buses in Winnipeg were idled, although schools were open (try figuring THAT one out). Hundreds if not thousands of cars would not start.

Those cars that were on the road were almost impossible for other motorists to see due to the plumes of exhaust fumes being emitted from each vehicle in the frigid air.

The "high" today here was -30C (not including the windchill). I took the liberty of checking Saturday's forecast highs in some of the cities or regions inhabited by regular visitors to this blog...

Delhi, India -- 22C

Sydney, Australia -- 25C

Johannesburg, South Africa -- 32C

Seattle, Washington -- -2C

Montreal, Quebec -- -5C

Billings, Montana -- -12C

London -- 12C

Zeebrugge, Belgium -- 12C

Miami, Florida -- 27C

Boston, Massachusetts -- 11C

Jackson, Mississippi -- 25C

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- 29C

Winnipeg, Manitoba -- -26C

This is all part of a brutal cold snap that follows on the heels of what so far has been an unseasonably mild winter for the Canadian Prairies. Already, four people have died as a result of hypothermia.

Most were in their cars, their cars stalled and they opted to try to walk for help. They never made it.

This cold is affecting fruit crops in California, the entire American Northwest and Canada's West Coast.

It's supposed to last until the middle of next week.

This is a killer cold, so you won't see many kids outside doing snow angels.

And now, I think I can explain what is causing this freakish cold.

It's this...

FROM THE CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

A new life form of tiny, cold-loving micro-organisms involved in photosynthesis has been discovered in the Arctic Ocean, according to an international team of scientists, including a Canadian researcher.
The tiny plant organism, called a picobiliphyte, is distinct from anything else in the ocean, according to Université Laval biologist and professor Connie Lovejoy.
The picture shows a picobiliphyta cell under a fluorescent microscope. The cell nucleus is coloured in blue, the cytoplasm in green and the plastide, which is responsible for photosynthesis, is coloured in red. The cell measures two by five micrometres.
"It doesn't follow close to anything else we know about," said Lovejoy.
Picobiliphytes are plants containing fluorescent substances that glow under certain waves of light and are small enough to measure in microns — or millionths of a metre.
The discovery came after analyzing DNA sequences of vast amounts of micro-organisms in the ocean. European scientists discovered the peculiar micro-organisms off their shores, while Lovejoy did similar tests in the Canadian Arctic and found the same tiny life forms.
Their odd shape also separates them from typically round algae.

My theory is that this cold-loving algae has migrated south in search of food or publicity and to sustain itself, it has brought the Arctic temperatures with it. I hope this is not the case.

But most of all, I hope my car starts. And if it does, the first thing I'm going to do is head out and buy a new pair of longjohns. Fingers, legs, noses and other bodily appendages can freeze in a matter of minutes.

The B.uS.h Presidency

REMEMBER THIS PICTURE?

AND THIS ONE?

These were pictures taken in March 2003, beamed around the world, of a democratically barely-elected "leader" of the world's greatest superpower, emerging from his little cocoon halfway around the world to rub Islam's face in it.

Unable to corral Osama Bin Laden, and with no other whipping boy to conquer and punish for the horror of 9-11, George W. Bush invented the "War on Terror" under the guise of something he called "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

He dreamed up, in his own little far-right-wing, puzzled head, the story that Iraq was a haven for terrorists and that it had, within its borders, what came to be known as WMDs -- Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It didn't matter that UN inspectors were never able to find the WMDs, and that almost the entire rest of the planet did not support an invasion of Iraq. But from his Oval Office, he ordered one anyway. Someone had to pay.

And the pictures above are him with that stupid smirk on his face showing up on a U.S. aircraft carrier to spit in Iraq's and Islam's face to declare what everybody already knew would be a very quick American victory over Saddam Hussein's forces.

Saddam, of course, was eventually captured in a hole in the ground, was checked for lice and other things in a very public humiliation, was imprisoned and, just last month, was executed for the vile acts of horror he perpetrated upon the Iraqi people.

And he deserved to die. But has his death helped the "War on Terror?" Or has it escalated it?

As Americans finally revolt against the fact that more than 3,000 of their own soldiers have perished in the years since then in this doomed-to-fail "War On Terror" in a country they can't begin to understand, it was a more reserved Bush on national TV last night.

The smirk, if you noted, was gone. But he opted to compound the many wrongs -- and do what polls suggest the majority of Americans don't want him to do, and and what all his generals told him from the get-go that he should do.

He wants to send MORE TROOPS to Iraq. More to die.

His presidency has been deep-sixed. Take out the u and the h in his last name -- it's the B.S. for Bullshit presidency. And no, I'm not American, and perhaps some U.S. citizens might be offended that I am opining at all.

But the whole world is watching this. And the whole world is involved and has a stake in it. And your man Bush is the guy, whether we understand why you elected him -- not once, but twice -- or not.

Today, of course, the Bush people are out in force trying to lobby for the lost son of a president's plan. It's all over CNN. There still is no true contrite admission that the B.S. administration absolutely screwed this all up aside from vague references.

No, now it's all about how whatever happened before, this is what must be done now to preserve the U.S. of A.'s integrity and legacy and all that crap. And to continue the "War on Terror."

Sen. John McCain, who appears to be the favourite to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, said no matter what people think of the mistakes already made, he wants to hear what the Democrats would propose to do if America pulled out of Iraq.

And I'd like to know what America will do when the inevitable happens if it sends more troops in: that the addition of 21,500 more young souls isn't going to change a country that is beset by religious strife that Americans, Canadians and other democracies can't understand.

McCain seems to be saying that a U.S. troop withdrawal will leave Iraq in a state of chaos. What, it isn't in chaos now? Why does America think it can just parachute its own style of democracy into a place that isn't ready for it, doesn't want it?

If the U.S. wanted full control, it should have gone in to Iraq with overwhelming numbers right from the start. It didn't. Now it's paying the inevitable consequences. The sooner U.S. troops leave, the better; the fewer American lives lost.

The most intelligent words I heard Wednesday were from Barack Obama, the U.S. Democratic senator from Illinois whom I hope will be the next U.S. president, based on the little I know. He was very fair and didn't say what he could have said about Bush.

No, he said what should have been said all along -- that American troops need to come out of Iraq. That Iraq needs to be its own country and not a puppet democracy with its mouth sucking America's nipple.

No matter what the consequences.

America is a great nation, full of some of the most advanced, imaginative people on Earth. But it has a terrible leader, one it doesn't deserve, one who has plunged it into a huge military and moral debt that has tarnished its greatness.

If that can't change by resignation or impeachment, then I sure hope it changes in 2008.