Not-Monday

It's not-Monday. Sure feels like a Monday, though.

Stargate SG-1

Started Stargate last night. I vaguely remember the movie; the special effects were pretty cool, and the whole mystery-of-the-stargate thing was done well, but the movie basically just built and built and built and then petered out without any payoff. Lots of hype, no substance. I didn't particularily care about the desert dwellers who were apparently intended to invoke sympathy, either. So I was really hoping that I would be able to enjoy the pilot without re-watching the movie, 'cause, ain't gonna happen.

I liked it, generally. Things seemed a little too connect-the-dots, like they had a list of things that needed to be done (re-introduce the doctor we left on Abados, check. Get the Jaffa character on the team, check. Sympathy moment about MacGuyver's kid and wife, check). But it has promise.

Plus, unexpected nudity. I don't think that was in the broadcast version.

RJA-Free-Zone Watch

Things are pretty quiet without RJA. Less bizarre, non-sequitor interjections, and a lot less offensive humour. That might have to do with the fact that Foran Object is also gone, the Dutch Nasty is on a half-day and I am obscenely overworked.

Airbus, Again

The government of Canada is presently spending a fairly insignificant amount of money, in the big picture sense, on maintaining the capabilities of her armed forces which, due to voter apathy and twelve long years of incompetent government, have been allowed to deteriorate to a dangerous degree. One of the things we are presently doing is replacing our fleet of Hercules transports. These aircraft have performed fabulously under very difficult conditions for a long time, the only complaint about them at present is that they are old.

So it kinda figures that we'd want to buy newer, better versions of what we already have, already know how to use, already are equipped to support, and already know will do the job and then some.

Airbus, on the other hand, has been pitching a fit because they feel that they were unfairly excluded from the purchasing process. They don't feel that they should be ignored just because their aircraft is an unknown quantity. And by unknown quantity, I don't mean that we haven't looked at it, I mean there is no airplane. There won't be a prototype before 2008 and they can't deliver before 2010, and those are extraordinarily optimistic estimates (as in, no chance in hell).

Airbus does its best not to mention how they themselves deliberately exclude Canadian companies from bids on components and systems for Airbus aircraft while they are accusing the Canadian government of doing exactly that to them, and they don't mention how the contract clearly states that we want aircraft delivered by 2008, at which point they may or may not have a prototype. And let's not get into that scandal involving their CEO and contract-fixing.

I'd like to see the government send Airbus a letter.

Dear Airbus,

We aren't deliberately excluding you. Well, we weren't. But we are now.

Suck it, Airbus.

Love,
Canada.

Funny

Courtesy of Pharyngula.