Go ahead, make my day

This is a special shout-out to one of my best buddies in the whole wide world, SiSi. Simon and I used to work together for several years and we not only shared a similar sense of humour but we also lunched together, shared too many inside jokes to count and were annoyed by many of the same things (too many to list!) Despite not having worked together for over 4 years now, we still talk all the time and keep one another company, just like in old times. It's a stressful time for me right now at work as it's quarter end and Simon sent me a song that he promised would make my day more awesome and what do you know, it worked. I have been rocking out to Boney M's 'Gotta Go Home' all day with a stupid grin on my face all day. Thanks SiSi, you da best *hug*

HST whining

Pretty sure that this post will piss off as many people as my anti-union rant but oh well, here goes:

I am sick of seeing some of my friends on Facebook and elsewhere jumping on the ‘Down with the HST’ bandwagon. You say that it’s not fair to pay more taxes yet you have no problem soaking up everything that comes from the collection of taxpayer money: parks, trails, education, health care, etc. I hate to shove academics down ones throat but if you would open up a book once in a while and take an unbiased basic look at some basic lessons in economics, perhaps you would understand why a consumer tax such as HST is actually not all bad. However, I'll give you a quick primer anyhow seeing as I am a huge econ nerd.

When consumers have money, they buy things. This creates demand. Demand requires increased production, which requires more workers to build the products and provide the services. More workers means more hiring. More hiring means less unemployed, which means less people to choose from and thus higher wages must be offered. Higher wages means more money in consumer pockets to spend on goods and services. See the cycle here?

By replacing the PST with HST and removing an entire provincial tax collecting department, we are receiving nearly $2 billion from the federal government to make this transition. Also, they aren’t touching my income, just my spending. So I can save or invest more with the actual cash in my pocket instead of a ‘tax credit’ like in the old system. British Columbia (and Ontario as they too have HST) will now be more competitive and attract foreign businesses looking to set up shop over here which means, yep, more local jobs for all. Attracting foreign investment to BC not only brings high-quality, well-paying jobs to the province, but for our provincial government, it generates major tax revenues that help to pay for education and health care and all the things everyone expects a Canadian government to provide.

I get it, you hate Gordon Campbell and you are mad at the way that he brought in the HST, I agree, it was definitely sneaky and I don’t like it either but I do feel for the guy. He is dealing with a province full of left leaning people who don’t want to pay for leftist programs, not to mention the uneducated hordes who do not ‘get’ what supply and demand entails. And what the hell is wrong with you people? Do you not remember Vander Zalm and the chaos that he brought to this province not all that long ago? You anti-HST people are all a bit strange; I am all for argument but when you have nothing to say besides “It’s not fair, taxes suck” then please come back to me when you’ve read the Coles notes on economics 101 and actually understand the role of taxation. I would rather be taxed on what I buy/consume than on my income any day, period.

Mouse trap

I am not a fan of rodents, not even a little bit. I was enjoying a pizza night at my friend's place with 4 other girls the other night when I saw something brownish moving out of the corner of my eye. I realised that I had had a couple fairly sizable glasses of wine so I tried to ignore it seeing as no one else was seeing what I was seeing...I guess the Shiraz was affecting me differently than everyone else. I saw the movement again and realised that the ground floor patio door had been open the whole time and I was in fact seeing a mouse. I grabbed a nearly full box of pizza off of the coffee table and flung however many pieces of veggie pizza there was in there onto a full ham and pineapple pizza (sorry fellow vegetarians, but hey, I screwed myself over equally here) and I tore off down the hall chasing this mouse with a greasy pizza box. Everyone was sitting on the sofa staring at me like I had completely gone off my rocker when 'BAM' I caught the mouse with the pizza box! I kept my foot on the corner of the box for 10 minutes while the hostess called her husband who was sitting at the local pub avoiding girls night to come dispose of the mouse. Good times were had by all but I wish that it had been a clump of mascara in my lashes instead of a mouse, yuck.

** no mice were harmed in this event

Keep it classy Vancouver

So I have wanted an iPhone 4 for some time, but I am with Rogers and they had like 17 phones for the entire nation or something equally ridiculous so I could not get my hands on one. I couldn’t sleep this morning so I decided that instead of laying in bed feeling sorry for myself that I would instead drag my sorry ass out of bed and get down to the Apple Store to try and score the new iPhone. I got there at 5:15am and was person #9 in the queue, I was feeling fairly confident that a phone would be mine but I was wishing that I had brought along a portable heater like one guy did! I made friends with everyone in line near me and we made the best out of being freezing cold, waiting around for the store to open. All hell almost broke loose when a Korean girl in the line just ahead of me decided to let her friend budge into line around 7am. One of the members of my Apple line ‘gang’ informed the newcomer that we had all been there for over an hour and that she had better get to the back of the line before there was a riot. She pretended to not speak English until a Korean guy about half way down the line started screaming at her in Korean and she burst into tears and promptly moved to the back of the line (they ran out of iPhones before they got that far down the line….there is a God!) In the end, I got my iPhone and life is good but I’d like to thank the Apple line ‘gang’ for making my stay in the freezing cold a little bit more amusing and fun. Huge shout out goes to my pal Amy who saw my Facebook pleas for help about wanting coffee so she brought me hot coffee and a cookie, what a girl!

Pizzariffic!

Last night I had a dream about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In my dream they added a girl to their team and when she accepted, they shouted out “Pizzariffic!” She wore a pink mask and I can’t remember what her weapon was but I am sure that it was something cool. I have no idea what in the hell this dream symbolizes but it was highly entertaining nonetheless.