I get it, Metro. I'm irrelevant.

December 20, 2021: Nothing in my kitchen but Kraft Dinner and soup. I place a $226 order with Metro Ontario Inc supermarket for delivery December 21, 6-8PM. This leaves $2 in my bank account.

December 21, 2021: I sit at the front door in my walker waiting from 6PM until 10:30PM. No delivery ever arrives. I go to bed with very little food and no money

December 22, 2021, 6AM: I submit a problem ticket through the Metro Inc. web site help centre.

December 22, 2021, 9:06AM: Metro acknowledges receipt of problem ticket "Delivery Late Order" and promises "our Customer Care team will review your request and happily assist you within 24 hours."

Not 24 hours later but 49 hours later:

December 24, 2021: email from Metro reads "Unfortunately the store has asked for a rescheduling on this order so, we would ask you to contact us toll free at 1-866-595-5554 to confirm a timeslot. 

We will send you a promotional code for 25$ by email to be use on a next online grocery order. You should receive your promotional code within a week. Don't forget to check in your junk mail folder."

I reply as follows:

I am having difficulties with my phone.

I am home ALL the time. I can receive an order any time. Can you please send my order, or else refund it, ASAP? I have no money and almost no food except what you possess. Please. I am disabled, on social assistance and desperate. 

Rich Landriault

December 25, 2021: Metro delivery service is now closed for the holidays. Merry Christmas

December 26, 2021, 10:50AM: Metro informs that my order has been cancelled and my account "will be refunded." Furthermore: "We’d love to hear from you! Share your thoughts about your online grocery shopping experience and you could be eligible to win $1,000 in free groceries! "

Well, that's fucking super. While you are totally victimizing a marginalized person, you're planning something real super nice for some random dude. Well, that just warms my heart y'all mutherfuckers!

December 27, 2021, 5:35AM: I post to the Metro Ontario Food & Beverage Company facebook page:

I am disabled and trying to live on $700/month. I spent my last $226 on groceries, with my shelves bare, on Dec 20 for delivery Dec 21. No groceries have been delivered nor any explanation why not. I begged for either my food or my money and got no reply. Yesterday you cancelled my order and still I have no refund. I have spent my holidays going hungry. How can you do this to someone? I AM HUNGRY !!!!!!!!!!! "

(I'm not actually hungry because I have friends and family who have taken care of me but that is not to Metro's credit. They do not deserve to know that.)

I added this comment: "ORDER 94516646. I am not available by phone at this time, due, essentially, to financial challenges."

December 27, 2021, 7:21AM: email received from Metro: "We are sorry that you were not completely satisfied with your online shopping experience. This email is to confirm your refund on order 94516646RO. The total amount of the returned items and/or service fees will be credited to your account."

I keep hearing about this "refund" concept but I don't know what they mean by that word since to date it has not manifested in me getting my money back. To their credit they have surrendered a reply to my facebook post:

Metro Ontario

Hello Rich! We are sorry to hear about this situation. For any request for a refund of a product, you can fill this document, one of our agents will evaluate your request and will carry out the refunding for you in the next days. This can be done within 14 days of the purchase date: https://www.metro.ca/.../help-center/reimbursement-form-qc. Please be advised that your concerns will be forwarded to Metro management. In order to restore the situation as soon as possible, we also invite you to contact the dedicated online grocery service at 1-866-595-5554 #3 for any other questions. Thank you very much and once again, we are sorry for this situation!

Well, the product refund request is completely inappropriate, as is the offering of a phone number after what I just said. But at least I know they are pursuing "the restoration of the situation" which means absolutely nothing but thanks for hurling a couple words at the wall to see if they stick. They didn't.

December 28, 2021: One full week later and still no food and no money. But I am seeing the beautiful subtext of their facebook reply. Here is their reply in other words:

Dear human: We are a corporation and so we make all the rules which govern our interaction. You are just a measly human product. In order to make this perfectly clear we give you a response to your adorable mewling; a response so utterly inappropriate in every line as to make you certain that no actual human employee wasted any of our time actually comprehending anything you have to say. Your resistance is futile. Maybe you'll actually get that "refund" some day. Maybe you will even get that $25 voucher that we conveniently packaged in a junk-mail trigger format so that it will hopefully go missing.

Well fuck you, Empire! As the great Princess Leia said: "Take your broken heart, turn it into art." I give you:

Every Corporate Apology Ever

Ladyhawke Revisited? Maybe?

Apparently I viewed the film Ladyhawke (Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer)way back in 2008 and belched out a snotty insincere review of it, just for a cheap laugh. More than a decade later I received this thoughtful response by someone operating under the username Aframe:

15 yrs since u posted this so I am sure you have watched it a few more times and come to appreciate the work of art that it truly is. How could any movie be terrible with Rutger, Matthew, Michelle and greatest of all John Wood aka Dr Falken (war games…. See what they did there. Falken Ladyhawk . Clearly a aviary theme. Yes it’s campy 80’s but it’s one of the better ones and is just plain simple fun. Enjoy it without expectations.

Well, the only responsible thing to do is see it again and figure out just how guilty I should feel. And since yesterday was the scene of my epic Christmas journey to the family farm and my body is destroyed, it's clearly the right time to stay in bed and track her down:

Fasten your seatbelts, folks! We're about to enter the ethical and intelligent realm of movie mongering!

Netflix: Doesn't have it. Doesn't pretend to. Three stars for honesty!

Prime: Says they have it but oops! No. Gotta pay an extra subscription for STARZ.

Crave: Says they have it but oops! No. Gotta pay an extra subscription for... What? STARZ again? Are these all the same company, taking multiple subscription fees with a different extra-extra subscription fee for every movie? I guess this is what the super-intelligent modern North American desires in a movie monger. Hurray for that. But zero stars

YouTube: Will rent for $4.99. Alas I have only $2.24 in the bank on account of Metro Inc supermarket company taking my last $226 on December 20th and keeping my food AND my money. Neat-o mosquito! Who knew you could get away with something like that? Well of course you can, as long as you're a corporation and not a human being. Maybe I'll find the responsible manager at Metro and execute them in order to go to prison so I can get a meal. I hope it's a quick trial. But I digress.

Video Detective pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result but it turns out they just want people to visit their web site to feed their ads from iTunes, Google Play and Amazon. Tricksy little Video Detective. You get zero stars.

iTunes (via Video Detective): Not available in my country.

Google Play: I can rent for the low low price of $3.99. Not low enough today.

Amazon: I can rent for the low low price of $3.99. But there is no button to click what says [collect rental fee from Metro who stole all my money] so I'm outta luck for now.

Plex: pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result but it turns out they just want people to visit their web site to feed their ad from AppleTV which dumps you in a page with no working links. Zero Stars.

Mojo Movie: pretends to have it by conning Google with a fake full-length video result, "watchable for free" but the play button just sends you to Google.ca and the other play button sends you to google.ca and the download buttons send you to... anyone...? Yes, google.ca. But wait! There is a [trailer] button! I can at least watch a trailer!? Nope! Google.ca! Zero stars.

Kanopy: No results. Three stars for honesty.

WAIT! Hold the presses! There is some extra fishy shit going on over at Mojo Movie where the Watch For Free promise is popping up in pop-ups which are not google.ca but the start of a streaming movie identified as Ladyhawke even though the music is a James Bond theme!! I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation. Oops. The playback has ceased after a few seconds. Apparently I need to SIGN UP FOR FREE in order to WATCH LADYHAWKE FOR FREE. Well okay then! Now we're on to something! Yeah, yeah. I know what you're thinking. They're going to want my credit card details in order to process all this free stuff, just for shits and giggles. But nope...!!

Google.ca!

Hoopla: No results. Three stars for honesty.

A HA! Someone named Orlando Samuels has posted the movie in three parts on dailymotion.com!

We're in! This dude has over 200 movie vids posted, with ads to some degree, which is fine with me. I need some way to pay. But he only has 33 followers? Well okay then. See you on the other side!

Thursday thoughts: Cosmology

I did not choose this topic. I have about 80 or 90 of them to address for reasons I will spill at a later date. Maybe next week.

Cosmology

Well... according to Oxford:

noun

1. the science of the origin and development of the universe. Modern astronomy is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics.

Is the bang theory really a theory? Perhaps it is rather an observation. It seems that we are observing the expansion of the universe; that we are still banging; not quite done exploding. To surmise that the objects in the universe came from the place at the rear of their direction of travel... seems fairly obvious? Are we not still experiencing the big bang as we speak? 

Do I personally witness this motion; this travel? I'm not sure I do. I would have to rely on the testimony of the astrophysics community, along with their other conjectures.

Or do I? I know for sure that something is "true" if I consistently experience it, or if I very carefully, without error or omission, assemble logic built from guaranteed (personally experienced) truths and/or other items of assembled unerring logic, which we can collectively call dogma.

Testimony: noun

1. a formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law.

I'm defining testimony as anything I've heard which I have not personally verified through experience. In other words, the above definition but without formal/informal differentiation. Is there some other word for that which I should be using instead?

Dogma: noun

1. a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.

I'm defining dogma as any assembled truths which we can, going forward, rely upon without re-analyzing or re-proving, because we have completed all the work. In other words, our own clean database is the only authority, which is infinitely more reliable than the words of priests and politicians, who make the newspapers every day for their scandals, and whose unreliability is in fact inconvertible for their failure to agree with one another on what the clean facts are.

I'm suggesting that these Thursday articles represent a clean new database of information, unlike the internal databases which most of us carry around, full of the "dogma" which we inherited through church and parents and teachers and everyone else of influence, and of course the dreaded media, much of whom, are extremely suspect, and owned and operated by power-mongers with known agendas.

So the big bang must remain testimony, and shall not be filed as truth, but rather as useful testimony, because the sources which provide it are those possessing a very good reputation all around, and provide much other testimony or dogma which we can, and have, consistently verified in our living experience. Concepts such as gravity for instance.

So we have spilled that most dreaded word here, the one I try to never use if possible: truth. There are always ways of questioning truths, no matter how reliably; how integrally; how courageously formed, because one can always find ways to question reality.

And I propose to define truth as the unvarnished facts which exist in reality.

And reality is the bonified state of things, as applies to our living experience. Meaning this: one can question such things as time for instance. Physicists might say that time is an illusion; that spacetime is something different than what we perceive, but here is what's important to me:

The reason we need truth is to fix the problems which riddle our living experience, and hear this testimony from me: that their are solutions for everything, but don't believe that yet. We are many steps away from turning that into dogma! Now, in my living experience there is a proven consistent perception of time: a linear inertia from which there is no known escape. In order to solve problems relating to our living experience, the truths will be those "proven" to be consistent in our living experience. Thus time is exactly what we all know it as. Time is true for all intents and purposes (at least so far).

Understanding the physicist's view of spacetime is not going to help you get to work early enough to placate your boss.

In order for the most basic general cosmological testimony to be untrue, meaning the reliability of scientists' own reliable personal experience, rather than our own, there would have to be a very wide-scale conspiracy at work, one too large and too long-running to be logically plausible. So such basic cosmology as the accretion of stars and moons and planets, all the same thing really, different in size and composition, is not truth, not proven to me, but reliable enough to me as unproven testimony to be useful (ah useful. Such a useful word!) because of the earned reputation of science, because of the support of my own observations through my own senses in all applicable matters of physical science, and also because of the lack, at least so far, of importance. The origin of the cosmos is not necessarily, as yet, critical to our solving the great problems of society here on Earth, and making our lives better.

And that is what it's all about for me. Why I write, research, contemplate, discuss... in order to pursue better lives.

Now Eckart Tolle might ultimately disagree with that; the relevance of the cosmos, but we are not there yet. One step at a time!

Aw crap. Apology required:

Kamal Khera or staff: 

First thing of three: I have no idea if anyone actually reads emails such as these.

Secondly: I feel compelled, regardless, to issue an apology for my email from earlier this morning which was facilitated by OpenMedia.org and which bears my own comments at the closing which suggest (with all honest intention) that the addressee is a purveyor of lies and such an enemy of humanity as to deserve no consideration as being included within the species.

However I was only thinking of the prime minister as being the message's target and not yourself (Kamal) until I received the autobot response. I voted liberal in the election which introduced the current PM to this role and am ashamed of that. I have never in my life probed Canadian federal politics with such tenacity until that day and the days since then, and I have never been more abjectly horrified at the state of humanity on this abysmal continent (where I was born) and the wretchedly duplicitous nature of Canadian political agenda and its current occupying government. That said, I have no direct accusations toward Kamal Khera personally.

I am content to assume you might have no knowledge of the slithery nature of this place you find yourself, or more likely that you do know but are trapped in effect and hoping to make things better somehow, or, rather improbably I concede, that you are an agent out to destroy the trudeau/Liberal anti-humanity profit-funneling machine from within! And none of this is to suggest that any of you do not take opportunities to make some kind decisions and create some noble structures when your sugar daddies allow or when they're not looking.

So I now feel better for apologizing. Not that I am suddenly a saint. I realize my own complicity in all that I hate about your ruling kin.

And lastly, if you are reading: I have long had a great interest in, and much respect for, various Asian histories, cultures and philosophies, India paramount among them, and I endured perhaps the most lasting heartfelt and warmly tearful experiences of my life studying the Gita as taught in English by guru Sri Aurobindo (along with the novel Siddhartha by the way). Both documents spoke of things I'd long felt but never heard from a person's lips, or thought I could ever realistically bring into conversation, and I just wish to say that I am grateful for Asian presence in this land and by your inclusion in the political landscape - so long as I don't go on to learn terrible things about you! I hope your spirit; your soul perhaps, survives your experience here.

I also hope that you and your family have a peaceful and joyful holiday season with much quiet time for contemplation, and perhaps some good wine, and a gathering fortitude such that you might return to work with an unflinching integrity, however new or established!

Sincerely,

[New Day Rising]

[Scooterville, ON]

In which NewDay confronts his dark evil enemy and keeps his rage in check a little bit

Hurray! Democrazy in action!!

Dear Prime Minister and Members of Federal Cabinet:

Despite your government’s 2019 promises to fix Canada’s Internet and cell phone affordability problem, our prices are still some of the highest in the world. Consider this your wake-up call: Canada needs you to take real, immediate action to lower our Internet and cell phone bills relative to other countries, starting with reversing the CRTC’s Internet price hikes.

Improving telecom competition and choice is the clearest and most efficient way to bring down prices across the board, but it won’t happen without concrete action from the federal government. As the first of many steps in this direction, I’m calling on Cabinet to reverse the CRTC’s 2021 Internet wholesale rates decision. This ruling isn’t compatible with lowering Canada’s telecom bills; it directly led to Internet price hikes and made it even harder for smaller Internet providers to compete against Big Telecom. Reversing this decision would be a critical first step towards guaranteeing affordable connectivity.

It’s not enough to make our prices “better than before”; Canada needs you to bring down our rates to keep pace with the rest of the world, not just beat our own poor past performance. There is a lot of work ahead, but as Prime Minister and Cabinet, it’s your responsibility to follow through.

Hey why not keep a promise every blue moon or so just to fool some of us losers you own that you're actually worthy of being called human beings?

Very sincerely,

[New Day Rising]

Part of this is a canned message facilitated by OpenMedia.org and part of it is my own contribution. There are no prizes for correctly guessing what's what.

This is a fun game you too can play, right from your own home!

My first shot at animation sort of

Hey there. Well I need to post three more times in order not to have the second-worst calendar year in the entire - gasp - sixteen years I've been blogging, however occasionally of late. Meaning the second fewest posts. 

I probably should have had the most ever in 2021. I've been lounging in bed at home every day, just me and my useless legs. I've decided to start physiotherapy just as soon as my disability benefits start kicking in. In January?

My writing buddies are encouraging me to finally get writing again, and getting my shit together blog-wise might be just the starting point.

Meanwhile I mostly make videos now. This one is getting rave reviews at Poetry Club and at a church Christmas celebration where it was played to a live crowd just this evening. Yes a church! I wasn't there but I was told the audience howled. To be honest I don't entirely get its appeal. I was just screwing around! Meanwhile the stuff I do that I think is hilarious often goes unnoticed. Oh well. What do I know?

I actually wrote this years ago and posted it here but the so-called animation is brand new. I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to work at Disney now: