Cheap Laffs

Checking out, cashing in:



Ah, memories:

What Friggin' Recession

$18 mil per for erratic, injury prone quickie with 'tude.

These only just back in stock.

Throwing out new shoes becomes fashionable.

Still Here

Been busy.

Another Burnside

Hadn't heard of this one before.

Ours has nicer whiskers.

Back To Ron In The Studio

Two words: The Meng.

Darwin Awards Entrant

Photographic section.




Note the Smeato-like hard-as-shitness of yours truly--not a peep.

Gimme Some Mo'

The seemingly unsackable CIC National Prez Mohamed El-Masry at it again:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is indifferent to Omar Khadr’s plight because the Guantanamo Bay prisoner is ``brown-skinned” and a Muslim, the leader of one of Canada’s largest Islamic groups said today.

Harper’s resistance to calls to repatriate the Canadian citizen shows he is pandering to Islamophobes, said Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry.

“In this case, Mr. Harper is playing politics because of the backdrop of Islamophobia in this country,” Elmasry said.

[...]

Elmasry contrasts Khadr’s case with that of dual Canadian-British citizen William Sampson, who was freed from a death sentence in Saudi Arabia in 2003.

Prior to his release, the federal Liberal government of the day made pleas on Sampson’s behalf to the Saudi government.

“Why is Stephen Harper so callously indifferent to Omar Khadr’s case?” Elmasry wrote.

“It’s painfully obvious: William Sampson is a white Westerner while his fellow Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, is brown-skinned and a Muslim.”

Cat/Mouse

About all Mighty Mouseses are good for...

Several Pints Of Bitter

Caught this interview with Alannah Myles the second time 'round. See how far you can get without cringing or hitting pause.

Q: when people who "visualize" their successes fuck up, is it due to improper visualization of the success or a failure to visualize the failure?

Shit

You should see the other guy.

Scooby Snacktime--The Remixes out August 4

An excuse for a smart-ass headline.

Advice: just say...

mp3: They Might Be Giants--"No!" (from No!)

Belle River Haiku

Jim came to visit
He had a glass of water
And we bad-mouthed Will

The Goat Next Door

I guess my neighbour's not so bad after all.

Emery: Time You Go Away

Later, arsehole.

Pitter-Patter Of Tiny Paws

Burnside




Burnside




Burnside




Burnside

Someone Had To

Golden Age

No picnic for the staff, obviously, but I gotta say I'm looking forward to my eventual stay in one of our care facilities:

Elderly and demented residents are attacking their caregivers in Canadian nursing homes at alarming rates, a new study out of York University says.

[edit]

“Almost all of the personal support workers that we surveyed said they experienced physical violence (at some point) from the residents they cared for,” [lead study author Albert] Banerjee says.

As well, about 30 per cent of Canadian workers – 95 per cent of them women – complained of unwanted sexual attention on a daily or weekly basis.

Almost 12 per cent said they suffered racial slurs over the same time frames.

In An Ironic Cock-Rocky Mood

The Stone Diaries

Went to see the Bevster read from the new book at Harbourfront the other night. Despite the obvious nervyness of a first public reading, she did a fine job. The modest number of copies available were snapped up quickly (official release pushed back to early April now).

The novel is dedicated to my sister-in-law Cindy, which was a very sweet gesture.

So I didn't go to see Deerhoof's Canadian Music Week gig. As if I would have been able to stay awake for it anyway.

Year Of Rat Festivities Cancelled

The Dumpling House reopens.

"We make dumplings in the front window. We kind of showcase the food, we don't hide anything from the public," said Michael Chu, the manager of the [restaurant].

We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful

No Beautiful Shore, the debut novel by our friend Beverley Stone (as previously mentioned) has been delayed at the printers but should be available around mid-March at your local.

Bev will be doing her first public reading as part of the Harbourfront Weekly Reading Series on Wednesday, March 5. It's not on their sked yet but I assure you 'tis so. So go. No heckling, unless it's in dialect.

And gents--she's single (with cats)!

Black DSH Showing Blonde Roots

Our pusscat refused to eat his salmon- and trout-flavoured cat food today because I put...salmon oil in it.

Post About Post-Rock Band Post-Iraq

Efrim Menuck, erstwhile of Montreal's maestros of the maudlin (de)crescendo Godspeed You! Black Emperor, talks about the band's demise in an upcoming interview. Unfortunately, Babelfish doesn't speak Gibberopseudish:

The last American tour that Godspeed did was in the run up to the current war in Iraq. For what Godspeed did, it was very difficult for us to work out a way for us to communicate directly with the audience about what was going on. We would talk to people after the shows, or we could make announcements from the stage but so much what Godspeed was, was one-way communication.

“And I had an existential freak-out about that. That those tactics aren’t valid anymore.

“People didn’t need a rock band pointing in the direction of [how the world was at that point]. Maybe what they needed is some clumsy words, a presentation that was a little more human.

mp3: GY!BE--"Moya" (from the ep Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada)

We're An Urban Village!

...wrote C. Hume in The Star the other day.

I must say it helps having rail lines a couple of blocks north, a commercially depressed area to the east, and a fucking great hill to the south.

Although they lack excitement, the tree-lined roads make up for a lot. Wandering around here one is reminded of the critical role trees play in a city like Toronto, which would otherwise be one mean-looking place.

Oh, pooh.

Hitchens Refuted

God exists.

Time Lapse

Dec. 16



Jan. 13



Feb. 1

Not From Sligo

....but his accent was impeccable.

Madness In The Atlantic

Feeding my recent obsession with adventure tales, I've just finished reading this book.

In the end, Donald Crowhurst didn't do much adventuring, as he never made it out of the Atlantic Ocean and didn't see many storms. However, his story serves as a warning against solo sailing, or, for that matter, doing any remote exploration by yourself. (Look what happened to Chris McCandless, subject of Into The Wild.)

I'm not talking about the obvious physical perils of solo adventures:
Sailing up and down the Atlantic for 243 days, alone, with limited radio contact and only one shore visit (with non-English speakers), is a sure way to push an unstable person around the bend. And in Crowhurst's case, it did. Heck, it probably could push a well-balanced person over the edge.

This isn't a book report; I'm not going to give you a synopsis of what happened to Donald Crowhurst. His story is widely available online. Plus, there's now a documentary about him, Deep Water. I hope to see it some day.

What's saddest about Crowhurst's story is how trapped he felt, how he boxed himself into an impossible situation. It's like watching the proverbial train wreck; you're unable to stop it happening. He had many opportunities to stop before it was too late. He could've even sailed to the West Indies, declared himself a renegade and never returned home. For him, too shameful an option perhaps. But at least he wouldn't have gone mad.