With regard to today's CBC article on the Transportation Safety Board's new recommendation for alpine-traversing aircraft to bear terrain detectors in the wake of a January 2006 air crash, a quote from the dead pilot's father belies his tenuous grasp on reality wherein he purportedly states that "Transport Canada ... directly caused the death of my son."

The extroardinary length of my preceding sentence notwithstanding, I take issue with the grieving father's remark: I do not believe that Transport Canada killed his son. According to the article, the plane crashed into the ground. In my opinion it is far more likely that, however unfortunate, the death was caused by the immediate deceleration of flesh into metal and earth.

I have the sort of feeling in my face and jaw right now that I often find when I'm stoned. I haven't smoked anything in quite awhile though, so unless someone's stowed her stash in an air vent perhaps it's a manifest symptom of whatever's led to my copious over-sleeping the last several days, or brought on by a change in weather.

Tonight saw metro Vancouver's first snow of the season. Everything is that familiar uplifting bright, soft, crunchy, quiet. Though I sullenly didn't haul myself out into it before sundown, it was the saving warmth of a dull day; I did go out and walk 'round with a camera and tripod for half an hour, until my fingers froze. Then I went and watched a film. Alone.

It's been æons since I've mailed a letter, so I decided to look up the current lettermail rate on canadapost.ca. Fifty-two cents. (Hmm, I have pristine memories of stamps in the 30-cent range; o the bygone days.) To my brief surprise, I noticed that the CPC solicits the customer to "buy stamps online." Hmm; makes sense these days I guess. I wondered what surcharges would be applied to such an order but quickly figured that of course, delivery's gotta be free – it's the postal service, right?

Nope... two bucks. And that's for "standard delivery (3-8 business days)." Three to eight business days; i.e. up to a week and a half?! (One can also opt to pay five bucks for "express" three-business-day delivery. Wowee.) What an endorsement for their own service. In contrast it would take mere minutes to walk to the damn store, get some fresh air, and spend a toonie on something else.

I ordered some light bulbs from homedepot.ca last week because I was feeling lazy and also happened to be at my computer when I read about their "free shipping for online orders" promotion. Seemed like a genius occasion to me; I could replace some fading bulbs around here that otherwise wouldn't be tended to for more distant weeks. Well, by the time my bulbs arrived over a week later – shipped casually by UPS all the way from Concord, Ontario – one of them was non-functional, and the wait had mitigated what savings I foolishly thought I'd gained.

Far more waste was generated here than had I simply headed down to a store: excess packaging, shipping costs which likely outstripped the profit margin on the items I ordered, and the fuel consumption and incident pollution created by hauling these items fully across the country rather than from a local warehouse around here.