Pre-emptive halloween uke blogging

The best religions have great hats

"National Toast" or "So Long and Thanks for all the Fishwrap"

It looks like curtains for the Canada's most right wing national rag. As much as I bleed ink and hate the thought of another newspaper closing down, I will not shed a tear for the National Post - I only hope the courts refuse to allow the Aspers to tie this anchor around the collective neck of their other newspapers, which like most other papers have enough financial trouble to deal with already.
The National Post was started by Conrad Black to attack the governing Liberals after Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to grant Connie a waver and let him become a British aristocrat while remaining a Canadian citizen. The soon-to-be Lord Tubby of Fleet Prisoner No. 90210 Lord Black of Cross Harbour decided that this would not do - mere law was not going this plucky underdog billionaire from achieving the British peerage that every Canadian boy dreams about. Deciding the Globe and Mail was not sufficiently conservative or at his beck and call, Tubby threw some money around, hired the cream of the conservative pundit and columnist crop, and set up the National Post.
It has never made money, nor has it impressed anyone with its editorial brilliance.
Despite the occasional presence of some bright lights, the National Post has been a rag from day one, the print equivalent of the FOX TV news, but without the constant stripper stories or teabag rallies.
Eventually Black gave up, renounced his Canadian citizenship and bought took his seat in the House of Lords and sold the money-burning Reform-Tory organ to the Asper family, long-time Liberal party supporters who under heir-to-the-throne David Asper seem to have converted to the Likud-Republican neoconservatism embraced by movement conservatives in the United States and Canada. The acquistion of the National Post and the former Southam chain from Black, along with their purchase of several specialty TV channels, seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Asper family's CanWest media empire.
Which, given the extent to which the Asper clan seems to like to interfere with editorial policy at their media properties, is just fine by me.
When a news organ with pretentions to respectability starts giving editorial space to hateful, chuckleheaded boobs like Kathy Shaide and "Raphel Alexander" -- well, its time to take Old Yeller out behind the barn and do the decent thing.

Update: Well, the court has ruled that the National Post can take the rest of the former Southam chain of newspapers down with it. This is a shame because some of them, such as the Montreal Gazette, were actually doing okay compared to the rest of the industry. On the bright side, there could be some decent newspapers for sale at fire-sale-on-boxing-day prices for anyone crazy enough to want to take a chance on the newspaper business these days. Otherwise we may as well pucker up and kiss goodbye the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and the Windsor Star. Which pretty much leaves the country with country with a bunch more cities that just won't have a real daily newspaper anymore.

Everything old is new again

It seems my former arch nemesis from my tenure at the Port Dover Maple Leaf back in last century is still doing what he does best - annoying the hell out of anyone even marginally more progressive than King George III, especially women. I'm sure he will take Antonia's critique to heart - not.
I'm pretty sure this is the same Ian Robinson who was the editor of Maple Leaf's main weekly competitor, the Simcoe Times-- back then he was a right-wing reactionary who delighted in the faux populism of people like Preston Manning and pissing off anyone who's knuckles didn't drag the floor. I seem to recall that when my predessor at the Maple Leaf was more or less run out of town on a rail for suggesting in print that one of the local service clubs' annual blackface minstrel show was an appalling disgrace (this was in the late 80's--the 1980's not the 1880's), Ian was either silent or said something about it being a harmless local tradition.
As long as politics didn't come up, Ian was generally a personable guy when the press gang were out for beers and a lot of us suspected his rabid conservatism was just a contrarian pose. I guess not.
Nice to see that in our ever-changing world, we can still count on some things to stay exactly the same.

Bambi II - Revenge of the hunted!

Sometimes it's okay to reuse free promotional items in your video store, sometimes...not so much.







(stolen without hesitation from the geniuses at "So Fucking Metal")

smart guys on Wall Street

Calvin Trillin meets a guy in a bar who explains why the financial system went kablooey. For what it's worth, this explanation makes as much sense as any I've heard so far.

My beard is neither long, nor funny

Weekend uke blogging - man in black edition

the original



the covers

Best. Kazoo. Ever.


Is it hot in here or is it just Whitney?



no uke, but a very different cover

You say it's your birthday, it's my birthday too

Happy birthday to Mike, Rina, Pete and of course, me.

Some people, well, they just plain suck is all

And yet, if I'd caught the miscreant who added the 30% bend to my front wheel and "straightened them out" I'd be the bad guy.

Some days at work are more entertaining than others

From the dept. of You Couldn't Make This Up:

Policeman held over theft of schoolgirl's underwear
The Yomiuri Shimbun
KOBE--A policeman was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing undergarments from a 14-year-old girl while visiting her house to question her about a crime she had witnessed, police said.
Arrested was Yuki Miyamoto, 26, a policeman from Aboshi Police Station in Hyogo Prefecture.
According to the police, at about 1:50 p.m. Saturday, Miyamoto went to the second-year middle school student's house in Himeji in the prefecture, to question her about a case of public indecency she had witnessed earlier the same day.
Miyamoto is believed to have entered the student's room and stolen about 25 items of underwear.
The student told police that when she was about to take a bath, she noticed her underwear was missing. Her mother reported the theft to the police.
The police questioned Miyamoto about the incident on the same day.
They said Miyamoto has admitted to the allegations.
"It's inexcusable that a uniformed policeman committed a crime during the course of duty," Junichi Wada, head of the Hyogo prefectural police's office of personnel supervision said. "In addition to investigating the facts, we'll deal strictly [with this matter]."
(Oct. 21, 2009)

and I had almost forgotten this one from last month. I was going to post it when it first ran in our paper, but I was uh...holding it, for later use.

33% of men sit to pee: Toto poll
KITAKYUSHU (Kyodo)
About one in three Japanese men tend to sit on the toilet when urinating at home, according to results of a survey by toilet maker Toto Ltd.
The Internet survey conducted in May, covering 500 men in their 20s to 60s whose homes have Western-style toilets, found 33.4 percent said they prefer to sit, citing "ease of posture" and "to make cleaning easier" as the main reasons.
The figure was 9.7 percent higher than in Toto's last survey in 2004.
Takuji Yano of Toto's public relations department said, "It seems that people are tending to be more conscious about the bathrooms in their home, such as equipping washlet attachments to the toilet and trying to keep them cleaner."

I wonder if Pastor Anderson knows about this?

Before House, before QI, before Jeeves and Wooster

Watch A Bit of Fry and Laurie 4x02 in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Quote of the day

"Television, a medium - so called because it is neither rare, nor well done."

-Ernie Kovacs

In which I demonstrate rule #173

Weekend uke blogging - the all-booty edition

The originals are here and here if you really need to see them

Another take on this vital issue via the magic of Ukulele


But the last word goes to the maestro - Mr. Richard Cheese

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.

LOL Lulu

Funny LuLu finds a funny one.

"Socialist countries like Canada condone divorce. What did we even fight the communists in World War Two for?"

The 2nd Amendment means never having to say you're sorry

I know many states have "castle" laws (as in "a man's home is his") that allow residents to shoot anyone trespassing on their property that they feel is a threat to them for any reason without facing murder or manslaughter charges, but what if you shoot someone you thought was a burglar and it turns out to be your live-in fiance?

Better safe than sorry, I guess. It could have been some junkie trying to steal his big screen TV.

Rule#152 is my favorite

A message from the Nobel Prize Committee

Just for Our Man in Abiko


Disclose.tv Monty Python goes hard on Henry Kissinger Video

By the way, this post has the distinction of being post #1,500. Another milestone reached, hurrah!