THE CATASTROPHIZER - THE CATASTROPHIZER

An ounce of discrimination is worth a pound of cure

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:51:05 -0800

If you haven't read this post yet, please note that everything has now changed. If you have read it, please note that everything has now changed.

If you're like me, you approve of events like Race for the Cure (which is American and not the same thing as the Canadian "Run for the Cure") because it promotes an awareness of breast cancer and raises money to fight breast cancer, but wish it didn't also create such a showy spectacle of... togetherness... camaraderie... tolerance. All those people pulling together to fight a common enemy, drawing strength from one another, etc...etc... Nauseating. How can a sensible person combat evil while simultaneously excluding and disempowering people?

Thankfully, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, that charitable behemoth, has once again proved that it can rustle up both funds and controversy. A few years ago, it trademarked its pink ribbon and started telling other charities they couldn't use the phrase "for the cure" in any way, ever. They set lawyers on charities with initiatives like "Kites for the Cure" and "Cupcakes for a Cure" who dared either a) raise money for a non-breast-cancer cancer cause, or b) raise money to fight breast cancer for an organization not called the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. It's also been partnered with companies that engage in "pinkwashing", a name for what happens when companies use pink packaging, announce that proceeds from their product will go to breast cancer research, and then never actually reveal how much money was involved or where, precisely, it will be going. And it's partnered with companies like KFC which (although we know they're simply a victim of "crispyfatwashing") have been associated with general unhealthiness.

But Komen recently decided it had set it sights too low - that it was, in fact, possible to be more ambitious and alienate more people. It emerged yesterday that Komen will no longer be giving any money to Planned Parenthood. This money - hundreds of thousands of dollars - was primarily devoted to the subsidizing of breast exams for low-income and at-risk women. Komen claims it put a stop to the grants because Planned Parenthood is currently being investigated by the U.S. Congress. Of course, that investigation was instigated by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla) at the behest of pro-life groups, and most Democrats claim it's stupid and senseless. Oddly enough, a woman named Karen Handel was recently appointed senior VP of public policy at Komen, and she ran as a Republican for governor of Georgia two years ago (unsuccessfully) on an anti-abortion platform and is chums with Sarah Palin.

So bravo, Susan G. Komen for the Cure! You have made it possible to run for a cure, while also running away from people who as a result might not know in a timely fashion that they're in need of one.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

Risky sex and farty dogs

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:00:48 -0800

I recently received the following letter from a reader:

I am only two years short of being an official senior. My fingers are arthritic and gnarly. My hair is thinning. I have one or two chronic illnesses. My best friend is dying of cancer. My old house has never been renovated and it is falling apart. My dog is very farty. I don't have any savings. Do you think granite countertops would give me a much needed boost? If so, do you know where can I find someone who would be willing to pay for my new countertops in exchange for my "friendship" (wink. wink.), or something else that I can afford to swap (maybe the farty dog????)?

This letter presents me with an unusual challenge. For the most part, I spend my time transforming seemingly insignificant things into promises of future disappointments, disillusionments, and tragedies. I focus on how one unimportant decision can result in totally unintended and appalling consequences, or how one stupid, selfish butterfly in Brazil can flap its stupid, selfish, flappable wings and cause me to make an unimportant decision that then results in totally unintended and appalling consequences.

What I find it difficult to do is to respond in a flip, glib, or hyperbolically pessimistic way to someone already well aware of life's hazards and griefs. It's the people who burble on about how you should always be positive and how I should really read The Secret I'd like to trick into watching anything by Ingmar Bergman, followed by anything by Lars von Trier, followed by Up.

So, because I can't make snarky, negative comments about much of this, and telling someone her life might be really hard at the moment, but her sense of humour and her use of "farty dog" in such a manner as to make it sound like a euphemism for something naughty and distressing should really be a great source of comfort is trite and unconvincing, I'll focus on the one thing I can in good conscience catastrophize: the suggestion of exchanging sex for kitchen renovations.

It's entirely possible that granite countertops would bring you a much-needed and well-deserved boost. I also think it's entirely possible you could find someone who'd provide you with some countertops free of charge if you subjected him to your feminine wiles. The problem is, such a man would undoubtedly be either a) a dangerous pervert, or b) desperately lonely and vulnerable and dull and interested in you for more than your wiles. Either way, you'd find yourself resenting those granite countertops that initially promised so much pleasure and delight.

I have found, though, that feeling smugly superior to other people can also inspire sensations of pleasure and delight. So I recommend the following: visit the houses of people you know who have beautifully-renovated kitchens and bulging savings accounts. Then, concentrate on how boring they are, how much less funny than you they are, and, if they leave the kitchen for a moment, encourage your dog to fart on their counter.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

No SOPA!

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:07:48 -0800

I'm pretty sure I'm not in favour of SOPA. Also, I'm feeling under the weather today.

ha ha tony ur fnny

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:04:50 -0800

The other day, I suddenly remembered Anthony Weiner and reflected upon the fact that he is still out there, somewhere, and that wherever he is, he has a perfect view of the ruins of his life. Remember Weiner? He's the former politician-on-the-rise/friend-of-Jon-Stewart who tweeted photos of his crotch to random ladies, for some reason trusting that random ladies would for some reason decide not to tell anyone else about it.

I have frequently deplored the lack of crotch-related scandals in Canadian politics, but recently there was at least a Twitter-related scandal to tide me over. Tony Clement, Conservative politician and proud unnecessary-gazebo-builder, decided it would be a grand idea to call a teenager names. Clement, providing unasked-for insight into his intellectual preoccupations, tweeted the following while watching Hockey Night in Canada: "Coach's Corner gave me a lot to think about tonite." Keith Pettinger, of Parry Sound High School, responded: "If you can't spell, how can you run Canada's treasury?" Later, he generously offered Clement the opportunity to join him at Parry Sound High School in order to learn to spell.

So far, so good. We have a politician desperately trying to be relevant and relatable in 140 characters or less, and we have a smart-ass kid who has already won my vote for whatever position he might end up wanting to run for as a grown-up.

But then, Clement suffers from some kind of strange, non-pervy Weiner attack. Instead of simply concluding that teenagers are all mouthy hooligans who should be jailed indefinitely for misdemeanours, he decides to send a private message to Keith and the following exchange occurs:

Clement not only thinks it's appropriate to call a fifteen-year-old a "jack ass"; he, like Weiner, cannot seem to envision a scenario in which someone he doesn't know might share with the public something embarrassing and inappropriate that he's done.

I'm sorry for calling him out. I just want someone so involved with my, and Canada's money, to behave properly and treat people with dignity and respect and at least have the good sense not to write down and then share the mean things he thinks about teenagers who've actually done their homework.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.

My Piety Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:46:48 -0800

When I grow up, I wanna be righteous,/ I wanna be holy,/ I wanna be a Christian.

You may already have heard about the eerily eager, fervently faithful, God-loving children who have become an internet sensation by God-ding up some almost-still-current popular songs. They cleverly transform Fergie's "My Humps" into "My Faith" and risk improving the Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?" by redoing it as "Don't Cha Wish Your Saviour Was Right Like Mine?".

They have created a storm of controversy amongst people who a) don't appreciate musical proselytizing, or b) hold that lyrics such as "I'm a get, get, get, you drunk,/ Get you love drunk off my hump" should never be taken in vain or adulterated.

But wait! I know it's difficult not to be filled with indignation, not to revel in the kind of delicious outrage always inspired by tiny, preaching, Jesus-praising children. In this case, though, you would be better off putting that indignation on hold and saving it, say, for a re-watching of Mike Huckabee's 9/11 cartoon for kids, because the whole thing is a bizarrely-convoluted gag.

The "Praise Bop" videos were produced by an outfit by the name of "Manka Bros." It has a website, albeit a disorienting and murky one, and claims to be "the world's largest media company." For the world's largest media company, it has a suspiciously low-rent site, and some suspiciously low-rent products, and so it's not entirely surprising to discover it's some complex and, to my mind, profoundly unsuccessful attempt to lampoon media conglomerates. Or something.

A guy from Warner Studios thought it would be hilarious to parody the bombast and delusions of a production company by creating a fake one. Maybe my problem is that I just don't think he's done it very well. I don't think it's so funny. It's like a badly-organized website version of a sub-par Christopher Guest movie.

So that all that righteous, pop-culture-deformed-into-Christian-propaganda-related anger won't have been rustled up in vain, here's some high-quality, creationism-themed edutainment for kids. As far as I know, it's on the level.

POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by axident.

Father-Son Bonding at the Point of a Gun

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:59:14 -0800

A concerned reader brought the following concerning news item to my attention: "Moins de chasseurs à cause des mères monoparentales, dit le sénateur Boisvenu".
As my French has gone the way of my regard for Tom Selleck (as a man - as Magnum I still regard him frequently) and my youthful idealism, I turned to Google Translate and discovered that that jumble of delightfully nonsensical-sounding words means something along the lines of: "Fewer hunters because single mothers, said Senator Boisvenu".

As you know, I have always believed that single mothers have a lot to answer for. They threaten to unravel the moral fabric of the nation. They are obviously an affront to all decently-married people. They also often have to work really hard to raise children alone, making the more morally-upstanding and decently-married of us appear shiftless and lazy.

I have to thank Conservative Quebec senator Boisvenu for alerting me to this latest threat, and to Google, for translating this alert: "Noting the presence of more and more of mothers in society who are single parents, Senator Quebec has stated that 'hunting is no longer a tradition handed down from father to son,' adding that now, 'who is 14-15-16-17-18 years no longer have the reflex to purchase a firearm.'" "'We see that the number of hunters has made dramatic,'" he concluded.

Senator Quebec, though, is not simply mourning the loss of a tradition; he is bringing attention to a new menace. "He said that if the deer are not slaughtered in the Eastern Townships, there are good times and bad, between 5000 and 8000 collisions between animals and cars. 'It leads to other problems in terms of mortality,' he said." So single mothers, then, by not passing down a reflex for the purchase of firearms to their sons, are directly responsible for road fatalities in that it is through their negligent mercifulness that the deer remain alive to kill.

We can only hope that single mothers, now aware of this situation, will take responsibility for it, defend tradition, and save lives by purchasing weapons for their sons and teaching them to stalk and kill.

For Christmas, I'd like God to give me more adjectives to describe this song

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:55:39 -0800

The other night, my husband and I were on our annual drive to collect what turned out to be an only-marginally-deformed Ikea Christmas tree (last year's was truly defective, but this one has only one funny empty patch that can be camouflaged by way of strategic bulb placement), and we were listening to that radio station that's been playing Christmas music since June. (the one that features DJs who sound increasingly exhausted, rattled, defeated and drunk).

We were driving along, happily criticizing some familiar Christmas standards, when we heard a song. A song unlike any other song. A song that was released in 2000 and that I somehow missed until now. A song that caused us both to lapse into a stupefied silence and then dementedly and desperately struggle for words as though trying to speak English for the first time in the middle of an emergency.

The song is called "Christmas Shoes", and it's by a Christian group called New Song. It may well be the most stunningly appalling song ever written. If it were only half the song it is, it would still probably be the most appalling song ever written. And it keeps getting worse - that's the most amazing thing about it. You hear one verse and think, "surely that has set a new standard of awfulness and the next verse cannot be any more astonishingly awful" and then you hear the next verse. And it is worse. You start with a poor and raggedy child who wants to buy shoes for his mother. Then you find out his mother is very sick. Then you get the raggedy child looking forward to his dying mother MEETING JESUS. Then, you get the narrator claiming that God has made this urchin's mother terminally ill to help the narrator appreciate the true meaning of Christmas. Then, when you think your brain can hurt no more, there is a children's choir.

Here's a link to the youtube video. It's actually worth going to the website itself to read the comments section and to realize that you are on one side or the other of a great and unbridgeable divide. You will either be one of those people who questions why a young ragamuffin would want to buy his dying mother footwear, why the be-turtlenecked (I was going to go with "en-turtlednecked", but decided the "be" sounded more sophisticated) singer is sitting on a giant tree, and why anyone, ever, would listen to such a song by choice, or you're one of those people who can barely type your response to the video through the tears you're crying over that poor, poor boy who wants to make sure his mother is well-shod for Jesus.

You will be, if not in good company, at least in company whichever side you're on. Patton Oswalt has transformed his amazed horror into a Christmas stand-up routine.

And if you're one of those people who can think of nothing more moving than a man in turtleneck and blazer singing Christian things about death and a terrifyingly didactic and heartless God, you might enjoy both the BOOK AND MOVIE based on this song.

I've never wanted to move to Gatineau, and this isn't changing my mind.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:50:38 -0800

If you are an immigrant who wants to move somewhere people will welcome you and help you avoid doing all those irritating, immigrant-y things you're sure to do, have I found the destination for you! Gatineau, Quebec.

The problem with immigrants, you see, is that when they come to Canada, they bring with them their hopes, their dreams, their experience and their potential, but they also arrive burdened with all kinds of strange and foreign ways. In a display of remarkable thoughtfulness, Gatineau has produced a "guide of values" for new arrivals that points out which of those foreign ways would be most objectionable to their new friends and neighbours.

Who can deny the well-known tendency of new Canadians to neglect personal hygiene, have problems with punctuality, insistently offer bribes, and cook smelly, smelly food? Certainly not the good bureaucrats of Gatineau, who counsel recent arrivals against doing just those things.

Gatineau's attitude appears to be that if these dirty, tardy, corrupt, smelly people have it explained to them that while such qualities might go over like gangbusters in their countries of origin, they will not endear them to their good friends in Gatineau, these immigrants will happily stop being so determinedly dirty, tardy, corrupt and smelly and become truly Canadian.

It appears, though, that washing frequently and consuming scentless dinners does not quiet everyone's fears about immigrants. Recently, Lowe's came under fire for pulling its ads from TLC's "All-American Muslim", a show that bravely asserts that Muslims live in America, they aren't particularly unhygienic, and they tend not to be consumed by racist blood-lust.

This ludicrous and implausible show moved the Florida Family Association to write to Lowe's (an advertising sponsor) complaining it is "propanda" that "hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values." Their viewpoint must be rational and indisputable, because no organization the word "family" in its name has ever been known to champion hateful, unreasonable, or ignorant causes. Lowe's clearly agreed, as they proceeded to pull their ads from the show.

So welcome to North America, new immigrants! Try not to prepare anything stinky or bribe anyone with anything stinky or attack your children, but absolutely do not refrain from bribing people or violently assaulting someone now and again, because then the rest of us will know you're concealing a sinister agenda.

"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul."

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:56:38 -0800

It's a regrettable and undeniable fact of childhood that other children often suck. They are mean, and intolerant, and critical, and stupid. Some adults seem surprised by this, and say things like: "But children are so innocent and small! I find this implausible." Other adults say things like: "Young people are less able to understand and process their emotions. They are probably insecure and confused."

I propose, however, that some young people are heartless, bullying sadists not because they are unformed and inexperienced, but because they are, after all, little people, and big people are often heartless, bullying, and sadistic.

And, because school should be as terrifying a place as possible, sometimes the big people bully the little people and nobody cares.

A fourteen-year-old developmentally-disabled girl in Ohio told her parents that she was being bullied by her teacher and a school aide. Her father complained to the school, and the district superintendent determined the girl was lying and in an email explained that "it came to a point where I had to remind the man that his continued false accusations were bordering on harassment and slander."

Her parents, who unaccountably insisted on believing their daughter, fitted her up with a recording device, and what that device recorded should make everyone entertain the possibility that schools might be as scary as sharks, plagues, and great heights.

Aide Kelly Chaffins can be heard saying: "Are you that damn dumb? Are you that dumb? Oh, my God. You are such a liar...You told me you don't know. It's no wonder you don't have friends. No wonder nobody likes you. Because you lie, cheat...steal."

Not to be outdone, teacher Christie Wilt chimes in with this observation about a test the girl had just completed: "You know what, just keep it. You failed it. I know it. I don't need your test to grade. You failed it."

Chaffins, perhaps concerned that she will not emerge as the more abusive of the two, later asks the girl if she does chores, and when the girl says no, comments: "Don't you find that a little ridiculous? How you gonna do a job? You should be embarrassed. I just am in awe. Makes you worthless." Oh, and when the girl "misbehaved" they made her go for pleasant walks on the classroom treadmill.

When the tapes were made public, it emerged that this was not the appropriate manner in which to address a vulnerable young person. Chaffins tendered her resignation, and Wilt was forced to confront the unbridled wrath of the education system, in that her "intervention specialist" license was suspended for a year and will only be returned to her if she completes a grueling eight hours of bullying awareness and child-abuse reporting classes.

Thankfully, the district superintendent seems to have learned a valuable lesson. He conceded that insulting and demeaning a developmentally-disable student "fell short of our mission" and pledged to "work very hard to never let that happen again." "We need to provide proper training and restate our expectations of how we treat children so that this never happens again", he indicated, suggesting that his pedagogical philosophy is based on the delightful premise that unless you tell teachers they're not allowed to call students dumb and lazy, they'll do just that.

I hear they don't even have gazebos

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:07:03 -0800

Canadians, who like to think of themselves as a largely amiable people devoted to humility, apologies, and occasional hockey riots, now and then get a bit smug because they're not Americans. We have universal health care. We tend to believe that dinosaurs existed and were not the pets of prehistoric man, that children can be taught evolution in school without becoming god-hating, socialist homosexuals, and that god-hating, socialist homosexuals are often quite decent and deserve to be treated just like everyone else.

That's a self-serving generalization, obviously, and it springs from the complacency that can flourish up north when the north looks down below the forty-ninth parallel and sees everyone pepper-spaying everyone else in the face.

But then you hear about something like Attawapiskat and you're forced to acknowledge that Canadians can suck as much as anyone else.

Attawapiskat is a remote native community in northern Ontario where people are living in uninsulated shacks (or lucky enough to live in poorly-insulated houses crawling with black mould), enjoying a range of exciting experiences made available to them by a lack of indoor sanitation and potable water, and where children learn not to take education for granted because they have no actual school due to the fact that their old school building was condemned.

Of course, the most important lesson one should learn from this story, according to the people who spend their time being unfettered by the demands of basic human decency and then commenting on websites, is that the natives in charge of such communities are rich and corrupt, and the natives not in charge of such communities are drunk and lazy, so, really, the children with those rashes on their faces brought about by unsanitary living conditions had it coming to them and have only themselves to blame.

The federal government draws strength from and then reinforces such opinions by pointing out that it's sent Attawapiskat a whole lot of money - more money, even, then was spent on inexplicable Huntsville gazebos during the G8 summit - and implying that if the people there have squandered the money on trying to make up for a massive housing shortfall and didn't succeed, can't we all rest easy in the knowledge that those big-eyed, rash-faced children had it coming to them and had only themselves to blame?

The feds are absolutely right. I have no sympathy for fat-cats who use tax-payers' money to feather their own fat-cat nests and don't even bother creating a credible paper-trail to convince those same tax-payers they haven't been paying a great deal of misappropriated money for superfluous gazebos.

And is it really reasonable to expect the federal government to start putting time and effort into caring about sick, poor, disadvantaged native children? I mean, there are a lot of them, and not just in Attawapiskat. If the feds took that on, there'd be very little time left over for the construction of gazebos, and I don't want any child of mine growing up in that kind of world.