A conversation with my subconscious
Posted: January 2, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized 7 Comments »* So last night I dreamed that I was being given a tour of New Improved Walmart by Toronto mayor (ex-mayor? what’s the latest on that?) Rob Ford. Only he didn’t want me to know he was Rob Ford. He had grown some kind of chinbeard as a disguise, but it was a pretty pathetic disguise because he was totally Rob Ford and we all knew it (we? I was with a school group of some kind; I was a schoolgirl). Anyway, he was giving us a tour because Walmart had developed a new Shopping Structure and we needed to know how it worked. And I don’t mean Structure as in “building”, no, this was a new way of organizing your shopping, inspired by Facebook games. Anyone could still come in and shop, but they could only shop for crappy junk in the front room. If you wanted to be able to shop for any of the GOOD stuff, you had to pay for access to those parts of the store. There were multiple shopping levels you could buy into, just for the privilege of shopping. You still had to pay for things you decided to buy. Rob Ford said this was going to revolutionize shopping. For too long, we freeloaders had been allowed to browse the store all we liked – for free! Well, no more. Now, at last, Walmart would start making money!
*I admit, I felt pretty skeptical of his business plan. Who in their right mind would pay to shop at Walmart? A lot of people were doing it, however, and it was true that the stuff you could shop for in the “free” part of the store kind of sucked. And wasn’t really free.
* I can’t decide if this dream is about Facebook, or politics, or some other thing my subconscious has decided to drape in a skin of Facebook and politics.
* Oh, wait, yes I can. Hello, symbols.
* Maybe it was a dream about writing and blogging, about the hidden costs. Here I am a writer, on the NYT best-seller list, in an enviable position, but it doesn’t come without compromise, without paying some part of yourself that you think you won’t miss until one day you do.
* But! Here I am. Things can be recovered. Maybe even all the things. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to do it and doing the work required.
* I make it sound so simple.
What you described there is more or less the current Free-to-Play (or F2P) model of many online games. I’m almost surprised Walmart hasn’t actually tried it yet.
QUICK! HIDE THIS POST!
maybe it’s about writing & self-promotion? Like, making an author facebook page to promote an upcoming book, and then finding oneself still promoting the book *and* trying to get people to like the facebook page–and voila, the thing that was supposed to solve the problem has itself become another problem to be solved? <–NOT A HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE.
FB has rather recently made it so that not everybody who “likes” your page will automatically see updates in their feeds unless you PAY MONEY. So you’re trying to get started just as things have gotten even more annoying. I believe the technical term for this is “ass”.
(I don’t pay, BTW. I decided that if people want me, they can look for me. It’s the sanity-saving move for me, but I can’t pretend to know whether it’s the right move for you.)
bleargh, I’d heard about that but was choosing to ignore it. Not gonna pay. I guess I could just copy all the posts to my personal site, but that defeats part of the purpose, which was to not spam my non-book-interested fb friends w/author promotion stuff. Oh well; a lot of my friends are interested. And the ones who aren’t can quietly block my posts, I guess.
See?! The technology that was supposed to help me has just created another problem!
The latest, since you asked, on Rob Ford is this: As you know, on Nov. 26th, a judge found that the Mayor of Toronto (don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him) had violated the Ontario Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and employed the minimum penalty UNDER the act – he removed Ford from office. Two weeks were given to allow the city time to plan an orderly transition of leadership – and also, presumably, to give the mayor time to file an appeal, which he did.
Ford then sought a stay of the decision pending outcome of the appeal, which was granted on Dec. 5th. The appeal will be heard January 7th. It’s not clear how long it will take for a decision to be reached regarding the appeal and he’s mayor until then. Or longer, if he wins the appeal of course. Under the relevant Act, there’s no higher body for either side to appeal to after that, so the decision will be final.
If Ford is finally removed from office, City Council then has to decide whether to call a byelection or appoint an interim mayor. Ford was initially very bullish on declaring that he would run in any byelection (which he would be entitled to do – he was not disqualified from running for office again) until polling started to show that awesome NDP Member of Parliament Olivia Chow would hand him his butt. Now his people have been floating the trial balloon that if Ford is removed from office, Council should appoint HIM the interim mayor… to replace himself… for the rest of his term.
Lawyers I have spoken to have said that the initial decision was absolutely iron-clad legally so the consensus is that Ford will lose the appeal, but the consensus was that he would never be removed from office in the first place, so we’ll just have to see.
Ahem. This ends your only sort-of solicited info-dump about municipal politics in the City of Toronto. : )
That’s more info than I got from the media, and I was curious!