Falling for Fall
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I'd forgotten how hot the sun could be in the Okanagan Valley in late September. It makes it hard to decide whether to wear a jacket or not.It'd be nice to remember the simple times when all you cared about was getting as much time on the playground as possible before being called back home.
I'll try to remember that as I get set to watch the U.S. Presidential debates tonight.
Here's a shot of my oldest Princess Boo Boo ignoring her mother and me at City Park, pretending that she's there all alone and taking a break from cruising the 2 and 3 year olds hanging out on the slides.
So much for the Peace Train
Cat Stevens was guest of Canadian Hamas front.
TORONTO - Yusuf Islam, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, was the guest of honour at a Toronto fundraising dinner hosted by an organization that has since been identified by the Canadian government as a "front" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a "so-called new society" created by a "so-called religion" and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to "lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land."
In a videotape of the 1998 event obtained by the National Post, Mr. Islam describes Israel as a "so-called new society" created by a "so-called religion" and urges the audience to donate to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services to "lessen the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Palestine and the Holy Land."
You have to wonder if this was the reason the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens was denied entry to the U.S.
Or did authorities have more?
More Draft Dodging Crap
B.C. town reels after proposal to fete draft dodgers airs on Fox
''If you think a monument to yellow belly cowards is going to somehow give a sense of respectfulness to these shameful Americans, who turned their backs on their country, you are sadly mistaken,'' one angry American wrote in an e-mail to city hall. ''I for one will never visit your town and spend a thin dime ever again, if this thing is built.''
Nice to see the forces of capitalism at work. Most of these small B.C. towns need tourist (ie. American) dollars to survive.
This has not gone over well with local business owners. A must-stop on the global counter-culture circuit, Nelson is filled with artists, spiritual seekers and dreadlocked drifters. But it owes much of its current prosperity to tourism, and to the American dollars it attracts.
Is there an echo in here? I thought that I just SAID that.
Let's look in on the mayor of Nelson, then and now, shall we?
Then:
The city's Mayor appeared delighted. ''I think it's the right place for it,'' David Elliot told the Nelson Daily News, after the press conference. ''We have a lot of open-minded people in this area and certainly people who are conscious of the efforts that happened in the Vietnam War.''
Open-minded. Heh. He means people who agree with him and the "peace in our time" crowd.
And now:
''I made an innocent comment, off the cuff,'' he explained. ''Yes, I am a peace activist. But I wasn't speaking as mayor when I said I liked the idea."
I wasn't wearing my magical mayor hat, so you can't construe my comments as being Nelson's mayor's opinion. See hat on, I'm the mayor- Hat off, whiny little idiot. I wasn't wearing my hat when I spoke to the press. Every reader's an idiot for not noticing that...
I feel sorry for the businesses in Nelson, who will suffer for the actions of a few stupid cowards, who want to commemorate their cowardice. Their only hope is to attempt to distance themselves as quickly as possible and mitigate the damage their hapless mayor has caused when he gave this assinine idea a sheen of official approval.
They should start by throwing him out of office.
Low-Cost Marketing Tactics
Domestic violence T-shirt called 'disgusting'
Free speech is a tricky issue sometimes, and sometimes that means defending the right to say something that personally disgusts us. Funny though: Canada really doesn't have free speech. We have "anti-hate" legislation and the CRTC, whose raison d'etre appears to be to protect our sensitive ears from Howard Stern. But bringing the appartatus of the state to bear on a tasteless t-shirt?
Premier Dalton McGuinty says he's not amused by the message.
"It's certainly something I find reprehensible, personally. I'll leave it up to the attorney general to determine if it is illegal," he told reporters Thursday at Queen's Park. "But I don't think it's in keeping with the standards shared by the people of this province."
"It's certainly something I find reprehensible, personally. I'll leave it up to the attorney general to determine if it is illegal," he told reporters Thursday at Queen's Park. "But I don't think it's in keeping with the standards shared by the people of this province."
Yes people of Ontario: your embattled premier is spending his time looking into t-shirts. No wonder the finances are a mess.
Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant is equally appalled and calls the selling of the shirt "disgusting.'' He says he needs to find out more about the shirt, but he'll look into whether it violates hate crimes.
Might as well call it a "thought crime." I mean honestly, you can't BUY this sort of advertising. This little gift shop is going to sell HUGE numbers of this t-shirt.
A resident of a local women's shelter organized the demonstration and called the T-shirt "offensive.''
Of course it's offensive. That was the whole plan. Nice national exposure for a little Niagara Falls gift shop. Just the thing for Christmas for the young nihilists who want to piss off their parents EVEN MORE than they already do now. And the local do-gooders have played right into the store owners' hands...
Falle told the St. Catharines Standard last week: "Obviously it's in poor taste... It's more to mock the ignorance of a man who hits his woman."
Yeah...Right.
That being said, our entire line is centered around poking fun at taboo subjects like violence, suicide, religion, and death. To take these images at face value, is reactionary at best.
Sure, it's not just about creating controversy so that others do your marketing for you, is it?
What do you want to bet that if no one had made a stink about this, most of those shirts would've wound up in the trash? How much do you want to bet that the people who buy these shirts are only doing so because of the shock value?
What do you want to bet that none of these shirts are actually worn?
Fatherhood
I guess fat people and new fathers are the last safe prejudices.
Why do I say this? Well, since becoming a father almost three years ago I have been inundated with stupid comments, mostly from women, that in one way or another disparage my abilities, suitability, or desire to take care of my children.
Because I'm a man.
The stereotype is that I can't be trusted to not bash my baby's head against a wall accidentally or change a diaper without smearing me, the baby and several rooms of my house with excrement.
How many times in an office environment do you see young mothers trucking their one or two month old newborns around to show off to their co-workers, to universal acclaim and much cooing from cubicle-dwellers pleased to have another interruption taking them away from their meaningless tasks? But when I do it the clucking hens all tsk tsk about how my wife shouldn't let me out with the baby because men don't know what they're doing. The implication being that my wife is somehow irresponsible for leaving her child with dunder-head daddy.
They all say that they're "joking", of course, and then pat my arm with an "I'm sure that you know what you're doing" condescending smirk, using the same tone that people used a hundred years ago when talking about the one-or-two "intelligent negroes" that they were sure existed somewhere on the planet...
It doesn't get any better as your child grows either.
Yesterday I took my princesses to the beach where almost three-year old Boo discovered the magic of the giant slide and 15-month old Poupouni happily watched as I carried her around on my shoulders. I struck up a conversation with another father who had his slightly older kids playing on the same slide. We talked for awhile about kids and sports and powerboats, meanwhile making sure that our kids were in sight and not killing each other.
A woman shows up with her two daughters, eyeing us carefully. Within a couple seconds she pipes up snarkily: "Mom's day off, huh?" and then stalks over to where one of her daughters has decided to eat sand. The other father and I stare at each other knowingly: obviously this is a shared experience.
Yes there are some fathers who are deadbeats, who are hopeless around children, who don't know what part of the kid the diaper goes on...but honestly can the ability of a father to take care of his child be so readily dismissed with ugly stereotypes?
You know what? I do want to take my kids to the park and watch them play. I can change diapers easily and feed them and comfort them when they fall down and hurt themselves. I will be there for the dance recitals and the ballet lessons and the soccer games because I WANT to be there.
Fatherhood isn't a chore. And the next person that utters a boorish, stereotypical crack is gonna get an earful from me about it.
Red Ensign #5
is up at The Tiger in Winter
When people speak of how peace-loving Canadians have always been, I think of the burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal in 1849 by an anglo-Montrealer mob -- which probably was what prevented the city from being the capital after Confederation. I think of the desperate battles of the First World War, when Canadians won victories on the battlefields that Britons and Frenchmen could not, when our best general, Arthur Currie, was knighted on the battlefield by King George V and later took possession of Kaiser Wilhelm's suite in the Palais Schaumburg (in Bonn). I think of the battles in Northern France in the Second World War, when Canadians ended up in a grudge match with the Panzer SS division that contained the Hitler Youth, when neither side would take prisoners (they started it -- they murdered fifty Canadian POWs on D-Day), and the Germans labelled our troops "the British SS".
Canada's history has always been more hard and bloody than we've been led to believe. The early history of the RCMP was about surviving in the harsh conditions of the Canadian wilderness and mastering it. The Canadians who fought in World Wars One and Two were tough bastards who had a long tradition of tough bastards to live up to.
Go see Ben's roundup at The Tiger in Winter. Read. Enjoy. Think. Argue. Do something.
Canada was once a country that looked out to the rest of the world and brought our best to it. We had a history of "punching above our weight". We no longer can do that -- unless we are in the flyweight division.
That needs to be changed. We have a lot of tough bastards to live up to.
Restoration
| Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785--Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You're very cynical and you like looking out for the little guys. You have a sense of humor a lot of people just don't get.
|
| Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. |
Well, that makes sense.
Via the Flea.
Rubber Band Gatling Gun
Just the thing to defend the homestead:
That'll show that damn nosy dog whose yard it is!
I'll probably need two on my deck to sweep the front and rear yards.
Winding the handle spins the barrels and fires off the bands, and it has a fire rate of 560 rounds per minute, though you can fire off all 144 rounds in just 12 seconds if the mood takes you.
Heh heh heh.
Re-loading takes between 10 to 30 minutes - there's a lot of bands to load.
Hmmm. Got to take that into account during engagements. Remember backup water grenades...
I could cover the front walk, too. I wonder if there's any way to invite Jehovah's Witnesses to come at a specific time...
'Buttocks...gusset...bicycle saddle'
For those of you who have only seen the American version of Coupling with the bland, forgettable American actors, check out the BBC version available on DVD, BBC Canada/America or some PBS stations.
JEFF MURDOCH. The craziest of the bunch, you have a
tendency to embarrass the hell out of yourself
while making no relevant sense whatsoever. But
that's what makes you interesting, right? When
you're not talking about Captain Subtext, Melty
Man, or the giggle loop, you're probably making
a horribly bad attempt at picking up a girl.
Let's just hope in the future, you won't say
anything as bad as that time with the Israeli
girl and her interpreter in the pub...
Which 'Coupling' character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Speaking of Whiny Bitches
Sheila Copps replacement as biggest idiot is profiled in the Winnipeg Sun.
Call her a liberated Liberal. After spending a quiet decade in Ottawa as a relative unknown, Carolyn Parrish has emerged on the national scene as a mouthy maverick MP who shoots from the lip.
Oh no...How long before they call her "spunky."
Love her or hate her, but don't expect her to shut up any time soon.
No, no it can't be...The author seems to !gasp! like her!
"All he did was harden my attitude. I'm not bullied easily and he was attempting to bully me," she said. "The next day I had firm resolve that I was not going to back down from any of it."
Oh that's rich! The day she made the comment she first denied that she made the comment, then, when confronted with the fact that reporters had it on tape, she whined begged and pleaded with the reporters to not use it so she could stay out of trouble.
Such firm resolve! Such incredible bravery!
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-- One of the Original Red Ensigns carried by the Penticton 1st Volunteers. It was present at Vimy Ridge when our little Dominion stood up and became a nation worth fighting for...
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