Still with Michael Jackson?

HLN is stilllll yammering about Michael Jackson, apparently. No wonder people complain that there's "nothing on TV" despite having 80+ channels to choose from.

Thanks to the Internet era this is going to easily eclipse Princess Di and Elvis for drawing out somebody's passing away. How many days until the NFL returns?...

Volleyball in the rain? No problem

Got to fill in this evening in the BVA Summer League... braving some heavy showers and potential thunderstorms, yep brings back the ol' Kolij memories huh. Got to update my "Days Since" ticker... now only if I can get back into bowling. Wife despises it so I'm likely waiting either for someone to host an event or the company have a fun night. What can ya do...

As for volleyball itself, maybe more later on my favourite sport and why I don't get to play it as regularly as I used to/want to.

Why don't you wash your hands?

One of the strangest phenomena of living in a 'developed country' appears to be that despite the proliferation of bacteria, germs and other viruses that are easily spread, there are people around who don't wash their hands after being in a public restroom, such as on the job, or in an airport.

I mean, even if you weren't brought up so as to wash your hands after going to the toilet, wouldn't you have at least read the advisories showing how easily those little nasties can get spread in a public place, and adjust your habits accordingly?

I'm kind of afraid to shake anybody's hand now. Going to use the company-provided desktop hand sanitizers from now on, that's for sure.

This too, shall pass (II)

As first reported on the PLP party site, the ruling political party is going to try to keep a united front and retain the current party hierarchy. I don't think that this result should particularly surprise anyone, despite the events of recent days where MPs (including ones with Ministerial control) publicly spoke out against their Premier over a myriad of issues.

I suppose that the party is going to try to back up their statement with a number of declarations aimed at promoting an outward appearance of unity. With the opposition UBP still unable to declare the way forward for them and losing members every House session, it's a ripe opportunity for the PLP to regain trust and confidence by the public, despite many people declaring that they're done with supporting the PLP.

Again, another master stroke by the Premier.

What remains to be seen: with El James and Terry Lister no longer holding Ministerial portfolios, how will the Premier allocate the vacant posts. He doesn't appear to have many loyalists available, and the ones who are do not have much experience in either those fields or as Ministers themselves. Perhaps a reshuffle of the deck is in the cards.

It couldn't be because I'm black, right?

Saturday night my wife and I had a nice dinner at the blu restaurant at Belmont, and then go to check out a friend's wedding reception after party at The Deep night club. As we get there we see a couple of people that we recognised and got to make some small talk with them. We're about to step inside when this staff member walks up to us and asks us "Can I help you?". Instinctively I explain that we're about to go to the night club then the guy immediately brushes us aside to I assume have a chat of some kind with the guys responsible for giving out the wristbands. But as we turn around we realize that the staff member did not ask anybody else if they needed help. We also noticed that we were the only black people in the vicinity.

Now, I'm no icon of fashion, but I'm sure I wasn't dressed like a hoodlum or someone potentially dangerous. We didn't look like we were lost, in fact we had just finished talking to the groom (by the way the groom looked sharp and the bride absolutely stunning).

To the two of us, the conclusion was clear. And we were completely disgusted by it. Unfortunately I didn't get the guy's name (my wife may have), but we weren't in much mood to party afterwards and left fairly quickly after that. Way to ruin a good night with what seemed to be an assumption that because we were black that we could not have any reason to be hanging out at this reception.

I'm sickened even now thinking about those events. Screw them.

Political gamesmanship

Pretty bold, to say the least, was the Premier's calling of a vote on a controversial bill after seemingly telling everybody that it wouldn't be called.

Even if it had passed, how can it have really gotten made into law by a Senate that would have seen the sneaky tactics used to get it to their door anyway?

Some MPs are apparently very upset about the tactics used, and it's hard to blame them. Considering the Premier himself said that he's not going to put forward a bill unless he's sure it would get passed, you'd have expected him to go back to the drawing board, work with his fellow MPs and come up with something more palatable for all MPs in his party.

Was he under pressure to get this settled before the summer recess?

Apparently the PLP is going to have a Central Committee meeting this week where presumably this situation will be discussed. Could there be a call for resignations, or a restructure of some sort? Or even the chance that members could be censured? Or even a situation where Parliament is forced to dissolve? Yikes, but maybe the snowball has begun to roll down the mountain.

Bob your head for three easy payments...

I just love ads, don't you?...

This device is supposed to strengthen the muscles in your neck and tone the skin, and sure it doesn't make one think about other activities that this simulates, no sirree bob,...

Tell you what, though, it's really cool (well, funny, at least) what these inventors come up with and the TV ads that are produced to hawk them.