Friday night music fix

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"we create our own reality"

Right-wing nut jobs believe some incredibly weird shit:

• "Cyclists are responsible for gridlock."

• Only 1.3 % of Ppl rides a bike but they are; Creators of TO’s Gridlock #topoli #tocouncil
  — ejb (@ejb__) July 18, 2013

• The Trayvon Martin case had nothing to do with race.
• The answer to gun violence is more guns.
• Mission accomplished!
• Doughy Pantload is an intellectual

But this one, this one takes the cake.

"Mayor Rob Ford top male hottie at Toronto City Hall, survey says"

( post title from here)
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Another day, another murder

So another white guy shoots and kills another black kid, what's the excuse this time?

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The attorney for a Milwaukee man who fatally shot his 13-year-old neighbor says his client did not mean to kill the boy.

John Henry Spooner is charged with killing 13-year-old Darius Simmons last year. Spooner confronted Darius because he believed the teen had stolen guns from his house.

Spooner is white and Darius was black, prompting comparisons to the case of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.

But Spooner's attorney, Franklyn Gimbel, says the cases are very different. He says the main similarity is that both victims were black teens.

(snip of recap of Zimmerman's acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin)

According to this story from the Milwaukee Sentinal-Journal, the other differences are that Spooner is 76 as compared to Zimmerman's 29 and that he shot the boy, a neighbour barely into his teens, in front of the child's mother.

Spooner suspected Simmons of stealing guns from his home and confronted the teen about 10 a.m. May 31, 2012, according to a criminal complaint. Then, as the boy's mother watched, Spooner shot Simmons in the chest with a handgun from five feet away.

Even if someone stole guns from John Henry Spooner's home, given the defence his attorney plans to offer, it may have been less a case of larceny and more a case of clearly justified concern for  public safety.
 (from the original AP story quoted at the top)

Gimbel acknowledges Spooner shot Darius. But he says an expert will testify that Spooner had mental illness that kept him from realizing his actions were wrong.

Because someone who doesn't realize it is wrong to shoot the neighbour's kid  is exactly the kind of guy you don't want to have to submit to some kind of pesky background or mental health check before starts stockpiling deadly weapons, because, y'know, freedom and shut up, you America-hating pinko!

Can't wait to see the NRA jump in on this one.

I want a border wall and I want it now.



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Cultural literacy

I'm noticing a disturbing trend in the newspaper copy I edit. Writers are assuming a stunning lack of cultural literacy in readers and dumbing down stories, often to an annoying extent. This week I've seen a food writer decide that in a review of the food at an English Pub, it was necessary to explain that "bangers and mash" was sausages and mashed potatoes. A Canadian Press story on the acquittal of the killer of Trayvon Martin contained this paragraph:

 Trayvon Martin’s brother, Jahvaris Fulton, said on Twitter: “Et tu America?” — a reference to the Latin phrase “Et tu, Brute?” known as an expression of betrayal.

I'm guessing that if an American public school-educated teenager knows enough Shakespeare to make reference to Julius Caesar's dying words, we probably don't need half-assed explanations like this.
I know we all think that nobody reads anymore (which makes me wonder why e-readers sell so well) and that the great unwashed have had their minds dulled by Reality TV and TMZ and video games and Hip Hop culture, but am I now going to have to explain what lasagna is a review of Luigi's Trattoria or explain that when a politician claim some statement or other is the "gospel truth" that he is comparing the statement to the Christian holy book know as Bible?
Are people really getting this dumb?

And by the way, get the hell off my lawn, whippersnappers!
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