Phone Slavery

I do not understand the popularity of mobile/ cell phones.

Today my brother phoned twice. I think it was him, he didn’t say much other than hello once and then hang up. I phoned back, once. Did not hear from him again so far. But another call came which was junk of some kind, not my brother.

The caller mumbled something I could not understand at all and then was gone. I don’t think it was a wrong number. We keep getting phone calls from some ad someone posted somewhere online, something adult I think. Most of the calls are late at night and all have been men. One of them I talked to said it was something adult, I didn’t ask for details. This has been going on for more than a year, since before the start of the covid pandemonia. (I know that’s not a real word, but its my site).

I kept the phone near by for over an hour in case my brother phoned again. It was annoying having it hanging around while I tried to get laundry done, dumped coffee grounds outside, made coffee, and all the other little things around the house day to day. Why do people choose to live like this? A slave to a telephone.

When mobile phones started they were sold as something you would need in an emergency. There were commercials with people (often young women) stranded on the side of the road calling their parents. Very effective advertising. But, the truth, the reality, is very different years later. When did anyone last have an emergency they needed a mobile phone for versus all the times it is used for silly little things they could have done with or without a mobile phone which costs an arm and a leg each month?

I know of people who spend hundreds of dollars each month on their phone and packages. I balk at paying another $50 a month for a phone along with what I already pay for the Internet and TV. Instead I use MagicJack and pay about $20 a year, including the phone number.

What do people use these phones for, in reality? I see people watching videos, playing games, etc. What I seldom see people using them for – phone calls! Now they want everyone to send a text, not to call them and expect them to answer. I can understand not wanting to feel like a slave to your phone, having to actually answer the thing every time someone calls. But… why not just use email. If you’re reading texts on your phone and paying hundreds of dollars each month, think of all the money you could be spending on fancy coffee, travel, clothes you don’t need, etc instead. Email doesn’t cost anything more than you already pay to access the Internet. How is it worth spending so much more every month to basically read email on a mobile phone? Did you laptop/ desktop die?

Maybe you never bought a desktop or laptop or any other kind of computer. I could understand choosing a smaller phone versus a larger computer. Except for the fact that they cost about the same and the phone has a much smaller screen which makes it harder to see and any websites you look at are smushed up to fit the tiny screen. How is this an advantage? Buy a tablet and check email, at very little extra cost.

Stop being a slave to your mobile phone.

Still haven’t heard from my brother today. I put the phone away back in its cradle ages ago. Likely I will hear from him in email sometime today, at his convenience.

Alan L. Brown and Ontario Plaques are Gone

What happened to Alan L. Brown who ran the websites for OntarioPlaques and TorontoPlaques? http://www.ontarioplaques.com/ and http://torontoplaques.com/

He has disappeared and the sites are gone. He had other sites, intended for school children mainly, and the two sites about historical plaques in Ontario. (First Ontario and then another site to focus on Toronto). But all gone now. I hope someone kept an archive of his site and all his photographs and documentation about his research and exploring.

A post about Alan, from the Toronto Star (2012) – Hobbyist’s websites document historical plaques all over Toronto and Ontario

For the past eight years, Brown, 66, has photographed all the plaques he knows about that have been erected by municipal, provincial and federal governments over several decades. Then he posts the photos on his websites, torontoplaques.com and ontarioplaques.com, along with transcriptions of the text, “context pictures” to show surroundings, maps and links to related subjects.

The 884 plaques he’s ferreted out in Toronto — the majority are downtown — and 1,483 across the rest of the province are usually installed on walls, roadsides, in front of buildings or in parks.

“The point of a plaque is for the public to read it,” he says. And that leads to “one of my gripes. Some are in places that are hard to get to, like a gravel road somewhere or in the middle of a field.”

Overgrown weeds and bushes sometimes obscure them, he says. “They sort of erect them and forget about them.”

But he put himself on plaque patrol, alerting either Heritage Toronto, Ontario Heritage Trust or Parks Canada to errors in inscriptions, illegibility on weather-worn markers and the occasional theft by someone who perhaps mistook their aluminum construction for copper.

Plaque-hunting around the province during road trips several years ago tested sleuthing skills and sharp eyes.

“I had lists but there were always errors,” recalls Brown, who pitted wits against his travelling companion brother in a game of who-can-spot-it-first. “We’d go to a place and couldn’t find it so we’d go into the local library and they’d say, ‘Oh, our town moved it two years ago.’”

Owen Sound Court House is for Sale

These images are from the Realtor (real estate site). I have taken photos of the Owen Sound Court House before, but only the outside. Now it is for sale. Priced to sell, low, because it needs a fortune spent on it. If you look at the listing (while the link is still there) you can see the rotting wood from water damage in the roof. I’m sure that’s just the start of it.

Strange Ontario?

I bought the domain Strange Ontario.com and I may move this site and other content over there. I am not finding an easy way to post/host all my photos online. Part of the problem being image size and the other image theft. One makes everything load really slowly, or not at all. The other means someone else is taking credit for and possibly selling my photos. Both, are frustrating. Plus, I’m just not feeling the enthusiasm I used to have for running/ producing sites. I think it is temporary. Now and then I miss it or get a great idea, things just seem to end up fizzling.

Maybe (another) fresh start will help. Without the stuff I’ve already tried to fix and patch and throw together.

So Far I am Not Dying of Covid

People who test positive for Covid are sent home. No one calls an ambulance to take them to the emergency department or the isolation room in the hospital. No, they are left to their own devices, sent home in whatever mode of travel they used to get to the Covid test. No one even makes sure they got home ok, or are self isolating.

I worked in a hospital in Toronto, as a volunteer. I know there are isolation rooms which they could use (and maybe are) for people who test positive for a really dangerous or threatening disease. Signs were put on the doors, with an extra sign in the hallway should someone not look at the door. Isolation was taken seriously. If someone needed to be isolated or quarantined for a reason, they were. It was not left up to the person themselves. It was not left to chance or whim. People were isolated, they were not out shopping because they got bored, they did not order in fast food, they did not leave that room in the hospital. Until they were no longer a danger.

If Covid were a real emergency, a real public danger as it is played up to be… why are people sent home as they would for the common cold, the flu and most other non-serious diseases, medical problems. If Covid were a real threat wouldn’t it be taken a lot more seriously when someone tests positive? But, its not. Covid propaganda is in over drive, the danger is hyped up to ridiculous levels, and people are afraid. Living in some kind of zombie horror movie they can’t escape. But, the threat the government and media keep selling just doesn’t match the reality. For one thing, some of you may be really disappointed to discover, there are no zombies.

Why is the “vaccine” being forced on people, more or less? Why are people acting/ talking like the “vaccine” will protect them from every sickness or disease, or death. If someone does not have the “vaccine” (and it is always “the vaccine” as if it is now the only one) they should expect to die or infect everyone they come near. That is extremely silly and not likely.

But governments are forcing people to forgo their privacy, their medical history, and carry around a card saying they have had “the vaccine”. What about all the other diseases, viruses, bacteria which people could share (in spite of masks, experimental drugs, gloves, etc). There are real threats to health which people have lived with all their lives and not even stopped to wash their hands in regards to.

Every time I start to wonder if maybe I’m wrong about all of this. The fact is, the risk of getting Covid is pretty low. The risk of getting Covid and then getting actually ill with symptoms is low. The risk of death is even less, lower than the risk of being hit by a drunk driver, bitten by a dog, or dying of cancer. I don’t see that as something to panic over.

The risk of dying from Covid may be higher than the chance you will buy the winning lottery ticket for millions of dollars, maybe. I haven’t read that, I’ve just assumed it.

I haven’t seen the government sending out vehicles to load up with the bodies of the dead, those people who tested positive and were then sent home to quarantine themselves with the ever so deadly Covid. Places which were set up to receive bodies, have not been at capacity. I know of one which was not used at all, not even as a Covid test facility, because it was not needed. Yet the media and government press on, threatening, cajoling, and scaring people. I don’t understand why.

I’ve been sick in my life, in spite of being fully vaccinated as a child with booster shots at times during my life. I haven’t had mumps, or polio, or any of the other things I have been vaccinated for. This “vaccine” does not prevent you from getting sick with, or testing positive for, Covid. So, why are people getting it? It is an experimental drug. That’s all. I won’t volunteer to be a lab rat for this drug I don’t need. Although the government is making it harder (and so much easier to just give in and get the “vaccine”) I will remain in the control group for this government sanctioned science experiment on the public. That’s my choice.

In the end, time will tell.

Bill Murray’s Personal Philosophy

Found this on an old blog post, one I had made in a blog I kept in mothballs.

I think the only reason I’ve had the career life that I’ve had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that, and it’s made me better at what I do. – Bill Murray