I owe AMI-tv an apology.AMI, which stands for "Accessible Media Inc.", is a television station that broadcasts all programs with open described video and closed captioning. I have passed a number of hours with the station because for a few, brief, fulfilling weeks it showed Magnum P.I. reruns on Friday afternoons, and it continues to air Perry Mason on weekends (Raymond Burr calms me). At first I was startled when I discovered that these shows were "open described" and that "open described" meant that a sonorous voice explained what was happening while it was happening ("Magnum smiles cheekily at the scantily-clad waterskier'), but now I've gotten used to it.The only problem is that now and again, the sonorous voice says things I'm pretty sure are wrong. It describes a character as "downcasting his or her gaze", and/or as averting someone else's gaze. I've been known to make mistakes about such things (I know this because my father has the right to make grammarian's arrests as a result of the authority vested in him by the Oxford English Dictionary), but I searched the internet, and the only people using "downcast" as a verb appear to be those writing Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction (not kidding) and unsolicited sequels to Pride and Prejudice (also not kidding).I have been cultivating described-video-related indignation for a while now (and withheld-described-video-related indignation, in that AMI has now replaced Magnum with one of those Law and Order spin-offs that doesn't star Richard Belzer), but, as is so often the case, I've come across something that makes the downcasting of gazes seem downright adorable.Dancing on Ice, a British reality television show that presumably features both of those things, has recently come under fire for close-captioning the dancing and the ice in such a manner as to confuse, insult, and concern deaf viewers.The National Deaf Children's Society has called ITV (the network involved) out for providing such captions as:- "Across the ice and the Samaritans and speedo you."
- "Right is affecting their partnership. Pulled your ball up."
- "The jump just walk straight in the fridge."
- "...dolomite go horribly one when you got your Blades Court..."
The BBC, unfortunately, is not in a position to feel smug, as it has, in its close-captioning past: a) referred to the Labour leader as the "Ed Miller Band", b) called the head of the Church of England the "arch bitch" of Canturbury, and c) indicated during a report on pigs that the pigs "like to nibble anything that comes into the shed, like our willies."So maybe I shouldn't feel so aggrieved when the smooth-voiced AMI man averts my gaze; at least he's not telling me to pull my ball up. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
One of the things I may not have made clear is that while I spend most of my time anticipating the worst and then reminding myself that probably something much worse than that imagined worst will end up happening, when something awful does happen, I become almost simple-mindedly philosophical about the compensations of life.Last week, my brother-in-law's beloved, serene, ragged-eared, adoring cat died, very suddenly and in a traumatizing way. Banana was one of those cats that in his lifetime, becomes a legend. A round, forever-peckish, unsuspecting legend. People who'd never met him had heard of him; people who had met him were struck by his almost hard-to-believe lovability. He suffered through years of hardship as a street cat, and then found himself surrounded by welcoming laps and edible delicacies in his later years. If Peter's tribute to Banana does not cause you to cry just a bit and gaze at your own pet in desperate wonderment, please don't tell me so, because I would have to stop liking you and tell everyone else to stop liking you, too.The fact that life can take you from severe deprivation to offerings of curried chicken and half-and-half, and that it then ends inevitably in death, has led Peter to develop the "Life Sausage" theory:"You can live a hundred years if you never leave your home, never eat fatty foods, never risk love or sex for fear of failure and STDs — and your life sausage will be one long, emaciated pepperoni-stick of misery, hyperextended along one axis but barely registering on the others. You can fuck everything that moves, snort every synthetic that makes it past the blood-brain barrier, dive with sharks and wrestle ‘gators and check out when your chute fails to open during the skydiving party on your sweet sixteenth. Your life sausage will be short but thick, like a hockey puck on-edge, and the sum total of the happiness contained therein will put to shame any number of miserable incontinent centenarians wasting away in the rest home. More typically the sausage will be a lumpy thing, a limbless balloon-animal lurching through time with fat parts and skinny parts and, more often than not, a sad tapering atrophy into loneliness and misery near the end. But in all these cases, the value of your life is summed up not by lifespan nor by happiness but by the product of these, the total space contained within the sausage skin."He provides the following illustration of different kinds of life sausages: I, inevitably, have something to say about the life sausage proposition, mostly because I will probably never skydive or swim with sharks, and yet still want to have a fat and meaty and enviable sausage.
My elaboration involves the peculiar behaviour of life sausages in close proximity to one another. (This is when I reveal how simple-mindedly philosophical I can become in the face of grief.) When Banana began a new, warm, well-fed, much-loved chapter in his life, his sausage grew fat and meaty and enviable. But his presence in our lives, the clear evidence of his own generously-sized sausageness, also caused our sausages to grow and develop and swell in response. He made all our sausages bigger.
Life sausages make each other grow. Being around an impressive, joyful, giant sausage can make yours more impressive, joyful, and giant. It is far more likely I will end up a incontinent centenarian than that I will wrestle alligators while having sex high on cocaine. But if I am very lucky, I will have a cat with a fat and healthy life sausage and find myself with a fat and healthy life sausage of my own.
 Maybe a bit hyperbolic (and inaccurate), but it does rhyme. The other day, I was talking to some friends about the bizarre and mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Neil Hope, "Wheels" from everyone-of-my-generation's favourite "teen issue of the half-hour" show, Degrassi. From Degrassi, I learned all about teen pregnancy (difficult), doing acid at rock concerts (devastatingly awful), and changing into revealing clothes in the school bathroom every morning so your parents won't think you're a slut (ingenious). In this day and age (that phrase always makes me feel decisive and authoritative, whatever comes after it), when celebrity corpses are followed from death-bed to morgue by crowds of avid TMZ-ers, it's almost unbelievable that Hope's death went unnoticed and unreported for five years. He might not have been Whitney Houston, but most people my age would have recognized him, celebrated him, and said annoying things to him at bars.So my friends and I were discussing the fact that he had died in a Hamilton rooming-house, and my talented actor friend mentioned that, while Hope might well have been battling various issues that led him to a rooming-house life, it was understandable that he was down on his luck, as Degrassi actors of his era received no residuals. I thought that sounded totally outrageous, and so the next day looked it up online so that I could gently correct him. Instead, I found (on a website that, despite the fact that it features a background made to look like a sheet of lined paper, I choose to trust) the following:"Today's actors would not 'screwed over' [sic] financially like the original Degrassi cast, who receive no residuals on reruns at all. There is more information accessible to younger people out there, thus there may be less exploitation of younger actors. Syndication residuals (money made from reruns of the show) get distributed to the producers of the Degrassi TV series but not the actors."Dan Woods (Mr. Raditch) backed up the creator of this distressingly informative Degrassi website when he explained in an interview: "Well, it wasn't a union shoot. But they actually paid better than scale. However, we were on a buyout so there are no residuals. But those are tough to get. The producers have to really want you on the series to get residuals." He also commented: "Well, it's still on a lot here! One hour every night on Showcase. My wife calls Thursday's Dan TV. CCR at 6:30, Then DJH at 7, then DH at 7:30. And I'm still broke!!!!!"So maybe my other friend wasn't kidding when she said that half the Degrassi cast was working in some food-service capacity at the Bayview Village mall complex during the '90s.I'm not claiming that the Degrassi producers were utterly evil child abusers, or that Wheels would not have ended up alone and broke even if he hadn't had a small-screen career that led only to jobs at Money Mart and United Furniture Warehouse. But it's certainly depressing to find out that these kids, who taught us all about alcoholism, and depression, and sex, and unfortunate adolescent rock bands, were rewarded only with the nostalgic attentions of 30-somethings and empty pockets. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
Everyone knows that critics of government involvement in things, or control of things, or of government (full stop) have an impressive weapon in their rhetorical arsenal: Hitler comparisons. There is never a dearth of Nazi talk in American politics - most recently, conservative commentators have been comparing Obama to Hitler because of his move to require that Catholic organizations provide birth control to their employees through their insurance plans. Jon Stewart has weighed in on this, making the apparently still radical and crucial point that the pundits who make this comparison tend to be irresponsible jackasses. Canadian politicians have finally twigged to the fact that all that might be needed to convince the public that something is wrong is to suggest it wouldn't be out of place in 1930s Germany. Conservative MP Larry Miller, during a debate on the long-gun registry, claimed (wrongly) that Sen. Sharon Carstairs said, "The registering of hunting rifles is the first step in the social reengineering of Canadians" and then stated, "That is what Adolf Hitler tried to do in the 1930s."Later realizing that not everyone thought a registry used by law enforcement to keep track of weapons was the first sign of Canada's descent into Naziism, he offered the following masterful apology: "While the references to the gun registry and what this evil guy did to perpetrate his crimes are very clear, it was inappropriate to use his name in the House."So people suspicious of increased regulations and government oversight have always had a ready-made, go-to charge: "[insert name here] is behaving just like Hitler." But what of the rhetorically reckless types who want to use an overblown, groundless, and incendiary analogy to condemn the people who are suspicious of increased government regulations? To what baseless charge can they turn?Enter Vic Toews, Canada's Public Safety Minister, with the answer. The Conservative government tabled the "lawful access" bill on Tuesday, and it is expected to pass. This legislation will make it easier for police to get certain information about internet users without first having to get a warrant. A number of dangerous, uninformed radicals (Ontario privacy watchdog Ann Cavoukian, Federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart...what is this, a hippie convention?) have raised concerns about what the changes would mean for privacy rights. When liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia made some (admittedly misleading and exaggerated) claims about the new powers that would be available to police, Toews bravely took him to task by declaring, "He can either stand with us or with the child pornographers."Finally! Now both sides of a "how much government is too much government" argument will have access to inflammatory metaphors. Government trying to run you life, trying to clamp down on certain freedoms? They're a bunch of Nazis. Citizens trying to hold on to certain freedoms, daring to criticize the government? They're on the side of child molesters. I love a fair fight.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
I have always been a fan of movies about threats from space, or threats encountered while in space. You know, the ones in which a rag-tag bunch of smart-talking renegades (and at least one super-hot scientist) are obliged to destroy an asteroid hurtling toward earth, or a noble, square-jawed bunch of brave and selfless astronauts are obliged to pilot a malfunctioning shuttle to safety. That kind of thing. One of the most critical points about such films is that after many scenes of agitated, nice-looking scientists explaining things to strapping, bull-headed adventurers, and/or Ed Harris explaining things to square-jawed astronauts, the asteroid does not, in fact, collide with and annihilate the earth and the shuttle is heroically saved. I had realized that NASA's history was not bursting with vanquished asteroids, but I hadn't realized quite how questionable its history was. I knew about the findings made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the ones that indicated that NASA's reliance on communicating complex ideas through PowerPoint might have contributed to the crash. I didn't, though, probably because I was ten at the time and mostly preoccupied with the TARDIS, know all the details about the 1986 Challenger explosion. And somehow, probably because I am really good at being uninformed, I didn't find out that the whole thing had been totally avoidable until today, when I read Roger Boisjoly's obituary.Roger Boisjoly was an engineer at solid rocket booster manufacturer Morton Thoikol who, in 1985, began trying to tell people that joints in Challenger's boosters might fail in cold weather. (In fact, there had been concerns about the joints since the late 1970s that had never been addressed.) Throughout much of the night before the launch, he and four other space shuttle engineers tried to tell anyone who would listen that the launch should be called off because there was a good chance the shuttle would explode. They called senior managers at their company; they pleaded with NASA. It was like one of those movies I like so much, with a rag-tag bunch of smart-talking renegades trying anything and everything to save lives. Except that they were treated like a rag-tag bunch of no-good renegades and completely ignored. Nobody listened. NASA said they hadn't made a really convincing case.Boisjoly refused to watch the launch, so certain was he the shuttle would explode. And then it exploded, killing seven people. And then NASA tried to blacklist all the people who'd known what would happen and tried to stop it from happening. And Boisjoly, unsurprisingly, was haunted by all of it for the rest of his life.The great thing about not always knowing about things when they actually happen is that you get the thrill of discovering sickening facts about long-ago cultural events that you can then try to share with people who've most likely known about and been sickened by them for years. POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
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.
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.
I'm pretty sure I'm not in favour of SOPA. Also, I'm feeling under the weather today.
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.
 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.
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