stephen harper's effect on canadian youth

For goodness sakes, won't someone please think of the children???

As a Facebook friend said: the smartest child in Canada.

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unshelved: imgagination?? maybe your imagination can double tap a word!!!

Raoul Dahl's Matilda Gets An e-Reader by Aaron Renier

And the music to go with it. Enjoy!

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rap news 5 featuring donald rumsfeld, julian assange and a million dead iraqis

Always late to the YouTube party, I've just discovered Rap News. If you haven't seen this yet, please watch. One bit is a little disgusting, but much less disgusting than the killing, torturing and terrorizing of innocent civilians.

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ted rall on the limits of leftist humour

I meant to include this in my earlier post about Ted Rall's new book. Just as well, it's worth reading on its own.

Advo­cate: Speak­ing of the Left: in your book you are pretty harsh on some very well liked and admired fig­ures on the Left. Michael Moore, for instance, and the Yes Men, whom I think are really hilar­i­ous...

TR: They are hilarious.

Advo­cate: So, what’s up with that? What’s the prob­lem with what they do? Aren’t they allies in your cause?

TR: I would say the rea­son I picked them is because they are so good. They are the best that the offi­cial Amer­i­can Left has to offer, in the same way that Obama is the best, in terms of the main­stream polit­i­cal sys­tem, that the sys­tem has to offer.

Michael Moore has got this immense audi­ence of tens of mil­lions of peo­ple, his movies can open up in hun­dreds of the­atres, he can talk about things that no one else can talk about, he’s got this great Mid­west­ern folksy sen­si­bil­ity, he has a gen­tle deliv­ery; he’s really kind of a genius. And his TV show was even bet­ter than his movies I think. And the Yes Men are great too.

And I am sure you’re ask­ing your­self, ok what are you talk­ing about, why are you down on these guys so much, and it’s because they don’t go there. Like Jon Stew­art and Col­bert, this kind of dis­sent val­i­dates the offi­cial sys­tem by say­ing “look at the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem; it’s so big and open minded that it even allows a guy like Michael Moore or the Yes Men or John Stew­art to oper­ate.” And the impli­ca­tion is, it’s not that bad.

But you notice that they mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple who actu­ally call for rad­i­cal change, like Howard Zinn or Ralph Nader. Those peo­ple are not allowed to get their mes­sage out. So you’re allowed to go up to the edge of ridi­cul­ing, but you can’t call for real change; all you can do is poke gen­tle fun, or not so gen­tle fun, but it’s got to be all in fun. You can’t call for the actual sys­tem to be replaced, and that was really the argu­ment I was try­ing to make there.

I would argue that Michael Moore has indeed called for the system to be replaced, but as Rall says, he has couched these demands in humour. People like Moore, Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Chris Rock and others function like court jesters: they are given freedom to ridicule leaders and speak truths others can't get away with, but no one in power takes them seriously. Stewart, with his softball interviews with right-wing celebrities and obeisance to some false notion of balance, is especially jester-like.

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this is just in: if you're gay, you cause birds to die

Please use your gayness for niceness, not evil!

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must-see movie: the yes men fix the world

Have you all seen this movie? It's out on DVD, and it's a must: anti-capitalist, activist humour. It's a kind of companion video to Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, humour edition.

Check out the website and the trailer.

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i hate christmas 2010

"The Profit," by Mr. Fish, used with his kind permission.

Friend of wmtc Joe Grav sent me the official Fuck Christmas rant, taunting me with the notion that my annual "i hate christmas" post cannot compete. He's right, of course, so I won't even try.*

Instead, enjoy this excellent video, finally available online for Canadians.

I'm actually expecting a brilliant December 25 and 26 this year, involving humour from The Larry Sanders Show, food from President's Choice, beverages from grapes, and company from my favourite person. Plus - an extreme rarity in our home - paid time off. And if that particular magic can only be conjured through an ahistorical mashup of ancient pagan rites and hollow Christianity and out-of-control capitalism, then so be it.




* Although I still need the mall for one thank-you gift. I reserve the right to rant if necessary.

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thomas friedman making out with china and other new york times obsessions

New York Times aficionados, past (like me) or current, will appreciate this: "Thomas Friedman: I Kinda Wanna Make Out With China" - and other classics, by Erin Judge.

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george takei calls out anti-gay douchebag

After the umpteenth person sent me this or posted it on Facebook, I thought I should post it as well. There's always someone who sees things first here on wmtc. Enjoy.

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browsing the internet just got easier

[redsock: laura asked me to copy this jos post here]

About Google Content Blocker

What is Google Content Blocker?

Google's mission is to organize the world's advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads. That's where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements.

How does Google Content Blocker work?

After you install Google Content Block, just surf the Web as you normally do. When we find a site that has content, we will block that content so you see only the ads. It all happens automatically, with no effort on your part. ...

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How does Google Content Blocker work?

You're probably too dumb to understand the technicalities, but we'll tell you anyway. We install special top-secret proprietary software on your system. When you browser to a Web site, this software examines the document. Ads are displayed, and everything else is hidden.3. What type of Web content is blocked?

How many times do we have to tell you? Everything is blocked except the ads. It's not rocket science. One more time. Repeat after me: If it's an ad, it's not blocked. If it's not an ad, it's blocked. Got that? ...

5. What if I click on a page that has no ads?

A Web site with no ads? What do you think this is, 1991? The chances of that happening are very small. In such a case, we will insert some randomly selected Google AdSense ads so you'll have something to read. ...

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avast ye mateys!

You know what September 19 is, don't you??? Arrrrr!

(Thanks to David and Stephanie for the reminder!)

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not only cute, but smart, too

One cutie does not want a bath.

And another cutie wants a boycott.

Thanks to David and Dharma Seeker.

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changing the world, armed with white-out and a black sharpie

Last time I declared someone "my new hero," she turned out to be an actor doing a hoax. I don't care. I still loved the video of the fake assistant pretend-quitting her imaginary job.

These guys are my hero of the moment, and they really did this, and wrote a book about it. And they had a sense of humour about it, too. Maybe on that cross-country trip I dream of making, we'll arm ourselves with white-out and Sharpies and help stamp out the scourge of apostrophe abuse.

Incensed by a "no tresspassing" sign, Jeff Deck launched a cross-country trip to right grammatical wrongs.

He enlisted a friend, Benjamin D. Herson, and together they got to work erasing errant quotation marks, rectifying misspellings and cutting unnecessary possessive apostrophes.

The Great Typo Hunt is the story of their crusade.

In 2 1/2 months, Herson and Deck traveled the perimeter of the country, exploring towns and cities in search of typos. They found 437 typos and were able to correct more than half of them.

I'm very surprised they found only 437 typos. I saw half that number on a menu in Santa Fe last summer.

Check out the website: The Great Typo Hunt.

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this grrl is my hero

When I get my first librarian job and stop working in law firms, can I do this?

UPDATE: hoax. Rats!

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delayed obit: john callahan

Ah, the dangers of taking a break from the news and Facebook. I missed the passing of John Callahan, now more than two weeks ago, and only found out inadvertently as we were throwing away an bit of old newspaper Allan picked up somewhere.

Callahan, as he was always known, was a cartoonist whose irreverent, sometimes morbid humour laughed at the world of disability, and at the public's response to disability. He was intimately familiar with that world, having lived as quadriplegic since the age of 21. Callahan was an alcoholic, and an adoptee, and I think he was deeply compassionate in a way that many people could not understand.

I constantly think of the line that he used for the title of his autobiography: "Don't worry, he won't get far on foot." His humour wasn't the pablum of "laughter is the best medicine," nor was it the trite self-deprecation of identity-standup. He just wasn't afraid to find humour in everything, and he didn't think he needed permission to laugh at anything.

The Callahan website is here. Here's some of the New York Times obit.

“This is John, I’m a little too depressed to take your call today,” the message on his answering machine said. “Please leave your message at the gunshot.”

Looking askance at the culture of confession and self-help fostered by the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Geraldo Rivera, he was not inclined in his work to be outwardly sympathetic to the afflicted or to respect the boundaries of racial and ethnic stereotyping. His cartoons were often polarizing: some found them outrageously funny, others outrageously offensive.

There was the drawing of a restaurant, the Anorexic Cafe, with a sign in the window saying, “Now Closed 24 Hours a Day.” There was one showing a group of confused-looking square dancers unable to respond to the caller’s instruction to “return to the girl that you just left,” with a headline reading, “The Alzheimer Hoedown.”

There was the drawing of a blind black man begging in the street, wearing a sign that read: “Please help me. I am blind and black, but not musical.” In another, a sheriff’s posse on horseback surrounds an empty wheelchair. The caption gave him the title of his 1990 autobiography: “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot.”

And there was the drawing of an aerobics class for quadriplegics, with the instructor saying, “O.K., let’s get those eyeballs moving.”

I never met Callahan in person, but I will really miss him.

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old spice library guy

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