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(sorry, I couldn't help it)
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"My back still aches when I hear that word"

Like that sculpture? Apparently you are a family values-hating homosexual then, at least according to a bunch of Jesused-up nutcases in Southwestern Ontario.
The Short Version: Exhibit by local artist at the library is featured in the local newspaper. The article happens to mention that some of the artist's previous work focuses on presenting postive images of the gay community. Local Baptists - who haven't seen the exhibit-  throw a hissy fit about how everyone will get gay cooties by looking at some statues because they were made by a homosexual and someone at the library throws a bedsheet over the exhibit  until the higher-ups can discuss the controversy.


I used to work in and around Tillsonburg so I can't really say I'm surprised by the appallingly stupid bigotry involved here -- I know there are some real whackjobs in the neighbourhood. I'm just very disappointed in the lack of spine displayed by the library.

Now, on the plus side, the library board did vote unanimously to uncover the exhibit and most of the comment at the local newspaper about the issue have been along the "what the hell is the big deal?" line, but I cannot believe there even needed to be a discussion about this. There is nothing sexual about the art and those complaining about it should have simply been written off as the crackpots they obviously are.

Seriously, if the title of this sculpture had been "Wrestlers" I'm guessing this dingbat wouldn't have had any problem with it. 

tip of the hat to Slap Upside the Head 





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Move it or lose it

Rick Mercer lays out the rules of the road for pedestrians. I would only add that stopping to gawk around at the top or bottom of an escalator shouldn't be hanging offense, at least not the first time, but standing in the doorway of the subway car to wave bye-bye to your friends while other people are waiting to get on or off the train should be for anyone older than five.

Obviously the real racists are the couple who complained

If you are a clergyman, you can pick and chose the people for whom you are willing to perform wedding ceremonies. If a couple comes to you and you don't think they should get married you are well within your right to refuse to perform the service or give the couple the blessing of your church, temple, mosque, shrine, coven or soltice circle. Catholics are under no obligation to allow gays or non-Catholics to marry in their church. Orthodox Rabbis can refuse to marry goyim. Druids can decline invitations to sanctify the handfasting of one of their congregation to a Republican. Churches are private organizations and can do what ever they want as long as it doesn't involve human sacrifice or annoying me in my home.
Government officials do not have that luxury. If someone meets the legal criteria for marrying - that is to say, they are of legal age and not obviously insane or under duress or siblings - you have to give them the licence, no matter what your personal feelings are.
So this dimwitted clown doesn't have a leg to stand on when he tries to defend his refusal to grant marriage licences to interracial couples. He should not be allowed to resign, he should be removed from office, yesterday. Naturally though, he claims not to be a racist, he's just thinking of the children:

However, [Justice of the Peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward Keith] Bardwell told the Hammond’s Daily Star that he was concerned for the children who may be born of the relationship and that, in his experience, most interracial marriages don’t last.
“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell told the newspaper. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.” Bardwell, stressing he couldn’t personally endorse the marriage, referred the couple to another justice of the peace.

Yes, I'm quite sure he has nothing against black people, he even allows them into his very own home. I'm sure he has a vast collection of Fats Domino records and thinks Tiger Woods is a credit to his people, some of his best friends yadda yadda yadda...

Which, of course is all bullshit. He is refusing to comply with the law and denying people a civil right on the basis of race. Despite his protestations to the contrary, this makes Justice of the Peace Crackerpants McCracker a racist.
I'm sure 200 years ago his ancestors were singing the same song - They were not racists, but they just could not support abolition because "what would happen to the poor children of the freed slaves without a white master to look out them? why they'd probably start stealing watermelons and the next thing they'd want to learn to read and before you knew it they'd be leering a white women and then where would they be? No, slavery was the only way to ensure those poor children didn't go wrong and get uppity and get themselves in trouble."
"Its for their own good," they'd say.

Bardwell's concern for the children of interracial couples is actually very touching, since the offspring of such relationships so often go wrong.

why Canada's murder rate is lower than the United States'

Two words: Drive-by knifings.

Mocking the bozos

While they supposedly serve as a recruiting ground for the Yakuza, Japanese bike and hot rod gangs - known as bosozoku (speed tribes) - are not particularly daunting to most westerners. For starters, rather than being the huge, hulking, hairy, leather-clad menaces one associates with North American bike gangs, most of bosozuku are under 25, don't need to shave, ride 250 cc motorbikes or (snicker) scooter and weigh about 120 pounds soaking wet with a brick in each pocket. The pathetic bikes they ride generally are modified to be as loud as possible, something you never need to do with a real motorcycle like a Harley or an Indian or even a large engined Yamaha or Kawasaki. They supposedly do some intimidating for the Yakuza and deal at little meth and have been known to gang up in groups of hundreds and take over small villages or resorts for the weekend, but their main form of menace is to get together in groups of about ten to several dozen and ride down the expressway at super-slow speeds, blocking traffic. Obviously, they are lucky not to have met a road-rage afflicted North American driving a Cadillac. Yet.
They often have silly haircuts and wear what look for all the world like embroidered lab coats and seem more interested most of the time with taking pictures of each other trying to look tough or cool than in causing any actual mayhem. The meanest, toughest ones probably end up as low level Yakuza, some probably end up in the militant right-wing black bus brigades the rest probably are doomed to a life of day labor, sho-chu and pachinko. The average westerner in Japan generally reacts to them with veiled amusement or simple irritation, but the Japanese consider them an absolute Menace to Society on par with cancer, AIDS or drunken U.S. servicemen.
It's about time someone taught those scooter-trash punks a lesson! The cops need to crack down on these damned criminal bike gangs once and for all! People are mad as hell and they aren't going to take it any more! It time for action:

Bosozoku bike gangs in Ginowan called names
Takeshi Kawamura and Ryuhei Yoshimura / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
Police and residents in Ginowan, Okinawa Prefecture, have launched a campaign to drive away bosozoku motorcycle and automobile gangs using the epithet "dasaizoku" (uncool gangs) to describe them.
The campaign aims to embarrass bike gang members and encourage them to quit their reckless riding and driving. But will it work?

No. It won't.

This has been another edition of short answers to stupid questions.

Admittedly, Japan has a very different culture and the bosozoku are not exactly the Hell Angels, (they aren't even Hell's Grannies) but unless the goal is to make them laugh too hard to be able to stay on their ridiculous little bikes, this is so not going to work.

"When in trouble or in doubt,

Run in circles, scream and shout"

Two thoughts on this video clip:

First, I see this kind of behavior every week. At my office, where some people need to work on their interpersonal skills and at the pool where I take my kids for swimming lessons, there is a bank of vending machines that sell canned coffee and soft drinks, bottles of cold green tea, water, sports drinks and, everyone's favorite -- ice cream. The room is stuffy and overheated and I'm there for a couple of hours along with all the other parents and the little brothers and sisters of the kids who are in the pool. I take my ipod and sit facing the ice cream machine and watch a succession of toddlers completely and utterly misplace their feces (occasionally this literally happens, but the diaper-throwing story is one for another day). I'm talking about two-, three- and four-year-old kids who see the ice cream machine and upon being denied a frosty treat, go straight to defcon 5 and launch the mother of all tantrums. 

The duration record so far this year is held by a three-year-old girl who, being told she could not have a second ice cream, launched into a 35-minute fit of floor-pounding, screeching, purple-faced rage that culminated in running across the room and repeatedly kicking her mother (the kid, not me) before actually falling asleep/passing out from lack of air mid tantrum. 

The intensity record was set by a three-year old boy who after jumping up and down hollering for a few minutes, ran straight into a concrete pillar in the center of the room and bloodied his nose, which seemed to calm him down a bit. 

For the record, my kids, while they might occasionally whine, never threw tantrums when they were little. In fact, with one notable exception when I had to take my son outside and explain that no, he could not go to karaoke in the bar adjoining the restaurant and crying at the table wasn't going to get him anywhere, they have always been extremely well behaved where ever we go. 

Second, the woman in the video is in the airport in Hong Kong. Its a good thing she's in a country that respects human rights as much as China. Imagine what might have happened if she had carried on like this in certain other places.

How bad is the financial crisis?

Bad enough that it appears to have driven the Japanese finance minister to drink.

You thought George W. Bush was an unpopular leader? Meet Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso.

Taking the "public" out of public transportation

I sure hope nobody ever sees an anti-abortion ad or religious message on an Ottawa bus.

Bordering on the insane

An American academic and former 1960s radical accused by U.S. vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin of being a “terrorist” friend of Barack Obama's has been denied entry into Canada to speak at an education conference.
William Ayers, a distinguished education professor from the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he was perplexed and disappointed when the Canada Border Services Agency declared him inadmissible at the Toronto City Centre Airport on Sunday evening.
He said he has travelled to Canada more than a dozen times in the past.

Of all the dumbass, pig-ignorant, petty, moronic, pissy, neocon attempts at revenge, this is one of the most ill-timed. No, I don't think border services called Steverino up at 24 Sussex for marching orders, but I do know that to be denied entry you either have to arouse suspicion in the border guard that inteviews you or have you name on a list somewhere. So either the border guard involved is a FOX-watching nitwit who thought he was doing his job and "teaching those pinkos a lesson" or the someone more senior in the relevant ministry made a completely tone-deaf and idiotic decision, likely in the belief that they were doing their job and "teaching those pinkos a lesson."

All things considered, I suppose we should all be grateful he wasn't tasered to death with impunity or anything.

Peas in Middle East


I betcha the folks at Mossad are wetting their pants in terror over this guy.

(Hat tip to Dr. Dawg)

So sad I nearly stopped laughing

By now you've probably heard of Ashley Todd, the College Republican operative who claimed she was mugged by a black man who carved a B for Barak in her face when he saw a McCain sticker on her car.

Now, do I hear you say "Wow, what a dramatic commentary of how out of control partisan politics are in America, and what a bunch of violent criminals Obama supporters are!" No? Do I hear you say, "That sound like bullshit to me. By the way, why would the attacker lightly scratch the B in backward, you know, the way it would look if you were doing it in the mirror?"

Great story, but not even the likes of Michele Malkin believed it. I wonder why? I mean, it isn't like we've seen anything like this before, is it? But that didn't stop the McCain-Palin campaign from shouting it from the rooftops.

Apparently, after confessing to police she made the whole thing up, Ashley Todd is blamed the media for blowing the story up into a "political firestorm" according to the lead investigator in the case. The police are apparently worried about her mental condition, I guess in addition to being involved in the College Republicans, the McCain campaign and being a lying douchebag, she must have some other problems as well. Sad what so much cognitive dissonance will do to a young mind. Keep in mind, she's from Texas and Bush has been the president since she was 12 years old, she probably can't help it.

Meanwhile, the exodus continues, as the wingnuts seize the reins of the Republican party.

Spellink iz fur eeleetust loozurz

Here is the kind of quality control we can expect from a McCain/Palin administration. Even Joe the Plumber should be embarrassed by this.

H/T to Lawyers, Guns and Money

Canadian idiots

At some point I'll write a longer post about the pointless, stupid, expensive and disastrous Canadian election, but for now let me just address a few choice comments to a small group of voters in a single riding.

Dear 3,667 NDP voters in Saanich--Gulf,

What the fuck is wrong with you people? 

Look, I know you probably got a phone call from some robot urging you to get out and vote for the NDP candidate and I know some people are stubborn about strategic voting and don't like to vote for the lesser of two evils and all that, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? It isn't like no one noticed that your candidate dropped out of the race, it was kind of in the newspapers and on the TV and all over the internet and stuff. Even if you really, really, really loved Jack Layton and the NDP and couldn't bring yourself to vote strategically for the Liberals, couldn't you just stay home instead of parading your jaw-dropping stupidity in public by voting for a non-existent candidate. If you thought this was some kind of clever protest vote, well I hope your sense of righteous indignation keeps you warm on cold winter nights in the fall out shelter after your returning MP manages to cause a nuclear explosion in the Alberta Tar Sands, or some other stroke of brilliance.

On the bright side, by falling for it  you have at least brought to light Gary Lunn's dirty tricks, but it wasn't like we didn't already know he was an asshole. 

Thanks to you, that asshole is now heading back to Ottawa to continue to do pretty much the opposite of what the NDP would to see done, and you sent him there.

Nice going.

Dumbass of the week -Michael Medved

Remember when Michael Medved was just another mediocre film critic? Well, he's still a mediocre film critic, the problem is that he writing about genetics and race and politics now. He's only a half-a-step away from arguing that Americas are the ubermenchen and God's chosen people. As poorly informed at it is, the latest piece of drivel isn't as bad as his "slavery wasn't so bad" column from a while back.

What not to say to a reporter

D'oh! Obama takes the .50 laser-sighted, night- scoped sniper's rifle of his eloquence and proceeds to blow off his own foot.

Use a hedgehog, go to jail

Police, those opposed to gun control and other experts on violence often talk about the number of people attacked not with guns or knives, but with so-called weapons of opportunity, in other words whatever comes to hand - chairs, pipes, baseball bats, shovels and even...

Hedgehog used in non-lethal assault
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A New Zealand man has been accused of assault with a prickly weapon -- a hedgehog.
Police allege that William Singalargh, 27, picked up the hedgehog and threw it at a 15-year-old boy in the North Island east coast town of Whakatane on February 9.
"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," police Senior Sgt. Bruce Jenkins said Monday. The teen did not need medical treatment, he added.
Police arrested Singalargh shortly after the incident, and charged him with assault with a weapon -- "namely the hedgehog," Jenkins said.
At a hearing in Whakatane District Court on February 14, Singalargh's lawyer said he intended to plead innocent, The Herald on Sunday newspaper reported. The case is due to resume on April 17. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, Jenkins said.

Now I know some of the nervous Nellies on the left side of the blogosphere will now start calling for a ban on hedgehogs, but just remember: If hedgehogs are outlawed, only outlaws will have hedgehogs.

Georgie get your gun

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."
"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Thanks to all cocaine he did in his younger days, Dubya is blissfully unaware of his personal wartime service, bravely flying fighter jets over the Gulf of Mexico to protect Texas from the Viet Cong, at least when he wasn't too hungover to fly and could be bothered showing up.
And thank God he isn't a reader or consumer of popular culture over the last fifty years or he might have learned from books like Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 or movies such as Apocalypse Now, Paths of Glory or Platoon that war is not romantic or glorious.

Luckily, Dubya hasn't talked to his own father or any other veteran about the difference between romance and stark terror, between glory and slaughter. Maybe his daddy could tell him about the romance of crashing your fighter plane into the ocean, or maybe John McCain could talk about the glorious times he had in the Hanoi Hilton. And those were fighter pilots, not the guys on the front lines where things explode and shoot back while you are struggling along in the rain and the mud and heat and cold on crappy food and sleeping in shifts in a hole in the ground and shitting in ziploc bags, if you're lucky.

Lucky, because if George and other morons in charge didn't think war and battle was romantic, glorious and the highest pursuit of manly men, we might have fewer wars. Whatever would the military-industrial complex do? How could governments justify spending billions on bullets and bombs and aircraft carriers and nuclear-tipped cruisemissiles while their people went without medical care and schools or in some cases even adequate food? Where would we be if it weren't for pointless conflict and needless bloodshed?

What would we do? Talk to each other? Settle disputes amicably in the United Nations? Share resources? Compromise? Perish the thought!

I'll grant him that being on the front line in a war is probably exciting. I'm lucky enough never to have had the experience, but I'd bet there is nothing like having people shooting at you and IEDs and car bombs going off to really get the heart rate up and the adrenaline flowing. Some people get so excited, they have a hard time calming down, even years later.

I'm sure just about any of the men and women on the front lines in Afghanistan and Greater Clusterfucktopia Iraq would be delighted to switch places with you. In fairness, I suppose we should point out that Bush said what he said about going to Afghanistan, proving that while he's stupid, even he isn't crazy enough to think there is anything good about going to the meatgrinder on the Tigris.

Sadly, No sums it up. If you have a strong stomach, Canadian Cynic has a romantic, exciting photo of the results of George's boundless appetite for adventure, but be warned, its pretty damned romantic -- lets just say that one soldier who won't be holding hands with his sweetheart anytime soon. I bet he'd have loved it if GI George had traded places with him a while back. 

And people in the United States voted this crapulous dimwit into office repeatedly?

UPDATE: Winter soldier is highly unromantic

Naked pictures
Someone, somewhere must have a box full of photographs of the head of Doubleday books having carnal relations of an exceeding degrading nature with a variety of farm animals or possibly K-load. That is the only possible explanation I can come up with for the publication of Jonah Goldberg's (aka Doughy Pantload aka Doughbob Loadpants etc etc) magnum opus "Liberal Fascism." Not only is it nearly 500 pages of complete, ill-considered, unresearched, dim-witted twaddle that would not pass muster in a remedial high school history course, but he was two years late delivering the manuscript to the publishers. If there were any justice in the world at all, the closest this shovelful would have come to publication would have been the Pantload trying to hawk home-mimeographed copies of his hand-printed screed at conspiracy nut conventions and through classified ads in the back of KKK newsletters.
David "Orcinus" Neiwert has the formal takedown at The American Prospect and Jon Swift, prior to publication of the Pantload's fantasy alternative history, had this spot-on summary of the "book".

No nailfiles, no liquids, no pulling of fingers
And lay off the chili and beer the day before a flight too. Holy unintended consquences Batman! If you think this woman was embarrassed when she cut the cheese in economy class, imagine how she feels now.

From the BBC:

Flatulence leads US jet to divert
An American Airlines plane made an emergency landing in Nashville after passengers reported the smell of sulphur from burning matches.
The matches were found on the seat of a woman who had attempted to conceal the odour of flatulence with the matches, Nashville airport authorities said.


We await the inevitable lawsuits.