Stevie meets the Terminator.

This week, Ahnold made a visit to Ennui on the Rideau where he met with our glorious leader Stephen - He with the Face like a Refrigerator Door - Harper. There, in the hallowed halls of Parliament, Refrigerator Boy gave his solemn promise to ban camcorders from movie theaters.

Now, I admit that I gave up going to movies in theaters years ago for various reasons: the theaters shrank to postage stamp size, but the sound still remained the same. Promos and trailers for other movies are fine, but I absolutely draw the line at advertisements. If I wanted to watch ads, I would have stayed home and watch the tube. Finally, the price of the ticket, the obscenely priced soft drink and popcorn with genuine imitation greasy butterlike substance on top would easily cover one month's membership in zip.ca where I could watch all the movies I wanted in the comfort of my own home. Not to mention the fact that Hollywood hasn't really made anything original in years; remakes and sequels seem the order of the day, Oceans 13 (sinatra, martin, davis and the rest of the original rat pack must be spinning in their respective graves) and that travesty that was the remake of "The Italian Job" just to name a few.

It seems, however, that Canada is the leading hot bed of movie piracy because our theaters are flooded with people and their camcorders. I have yet to figure out just how they arrive at that conclusion. As stated previously, I don't go to theaters. However, I have many friends who do, and so I asked them if they had ever seen anyone recording the movie. Without exception, the answer given to me was "no". Besides that, I have been told, the quality of such a recording would be so bad as not to be worth the trouble.

In an attempt to stem this apparent epidemic, Warner Brothers announced earlier this month that they would cancel all their preview screenings of their "summer blockbusters" in Canada. It was then I found that I am not the only one who finds such things as Spiderman 28 and Rocky 42 extremely tedious as this news was greeted with howls of joy from all and sundry. Of course, I can bet that in less than 24 hours after these previews are shown, DVD quality copies of the movies (not grainy camcorder versions) will be available for download on the web. One thing is certain though, they won't be from Canada. I wonder who Hollywood will blame then?

This is more than a bit unnerving

In short, the next time there is a national emergency of some sort the President of the United States has it in his power to seize control of every thing.

This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies. This policy establishes "National Essential Functions," prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.

Read it all here:
National Security and Homeland Security National Directive, hot off the White House site. It seems to have "come in under the radar" earlier this month. Do you remember hearing anything about it? I don't.
I shudder to think that anything that might be considered as a "national emergency" might rear up its head before the Shrub is out of office. However, it remains to be seen whether or not the next incumbent of the Oval Office is goint to be any different. One thing I am pretty certain about is that if this directive is ever invoked, it is a one way trip.

Still Winning Their Hearts and Minds

This is disturbing, really disturbing; a MySpace page apparently belonging to Deryk Schlessinger, the son of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who is serving in Afghanistan. The page featured attrocities, drug use, torture, child molestation, and rape.

Deryk Schlessinger's Web site indicated the 21-year-old soldier is stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where, the site's author writes, "godless crazy people like me," have become "a generation of apathetic killers."
The site indicated Schlessinger's team has survived numerous mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks. It also included several graphic cartoons. In one of the stick drawings, a top-hatted man laughs as he rapes a bound and bleeding woman in front of her family. In another depiction, a man forces a boy to perform oral sex at knifepoint as the child's mother pleads for her son's life.

This fills me with unspeakable horror.

Go West, Young Woman, Go West

Melissa Strong graduated on the Dean's List from the Electrical program at the New Brunswick Community College.

Now she can't get a job here because she can't pee standing up.

One potential employer dragged his knuckles over and told her straight out:

"He said: 'I'm not having a 20-something-year-old girl running around here getting the attention from all the guys and creating problems with their wives and problems with my wife. So I'm not hiring any women,'

Dude, if your marriage is that shaky, I recommend immediate intense counselling or divorce.

What I find to be most appalling is the fact that he said it in the first place, and second, that he saw nothing at all wrong with saying it.

Bear in mind, there is supposedly a labour shortage here in the maritimes because the labour force is hemorraging out of the Atlantic to the West in record numbers. This is apparently particularly so in the area of the trades. Believe me, attitudes like that of the git above aren't helping the situation.

Also, other women in the trades warned Melissa against speaking out or complaining because if she did she would never work in the province. Well, since she decided to leave, I guess she decided she had nothing to lose anyway.

Women in the trades have had a tough time of it, and Melissa expected some for sure, but not this blatant, as it is the 21st century after all. While she may not be free of sexism in the west, having a trade that is really, really in demand does grant one some FOAD leverage.

Good Luck, Melissa, Bonne Chance!

I find this difficult to believe

Mulroney may have been a target, Air India document suggests



Co-relation does not imply causality. I suspect this wasn't the only threat Mulroney ever received.

I'd be nervous

Toto says bidets may catch fire


The company is, however, offering free repairs

Update - Dr. Riyadh Lafta at Simon Fraser

Now the British government won't even give him a transit visa through Heathrow to change planes. Of course, this should not be surprising as the Blair is in bed with Bush and both have a vested interest in keeping the world ignorant of the findings of this report.

We need this data and, as unpopular as it is, we need to complete this work," Dr. Takaro said. "It's extraordinary that the British would have held up something, and it makes me think that they were influenced to do it -- we'd love to know why."

Another thing I have noticed when I have tried to research this story is the way that it has been almost ignored by the media. I found nothing on the CBC website, and this morning, my favourite current events program on CBC ONE "The Current" was supposed to have done a story on Dr Lafta this morning - but didn't. I am really curious to know why and sent an email to that effect. I doubt if I shall receive a response.

Update on the Update: I did get a response from The Current:

I am not sure why this didn't air or if it was a mistake in the promo ... I didn't see it in the line up. We are still intending to do the story though. Stay tuned next week.

Take care,



Lisa Ayuso
The Current

So there you have it.  I, for one, will be waiting.

Cowboy Nation

I wrote earlier about the recent massacre at Virginia Tech perpetrated by one lone man who besides being off his rocker, had extremely easy access to guns; access made all that more easy by the very lax gun legislation of The Commonwealth of Virginia. These laws (or rather lack thereof) make it possible to purchase any gun one would ever want with out permit or waiting period. In effect, in Virginia it is more difficult to adopt a cat from the local animal shelter than it is to get semi-automatic weapons.

As to be expected, the Gun Lobby claims that guns would have prevented this massacre. It seems that the Gun Lobby believes that as soon as this lunatic began firing, the students would have magically morphed into Bruce Willis and saved the day in a blinding flash of gunfire and testoserone. OOOOOOOkay.......

It is hard for one not of The Excited States of America to understand the American love affair with guns. To be sure, the right to bear arms is enshrined in their constitution. However, that said, I can't imagine that the founding fathers with their muzzle loading muskets could even conceive of the guns used by Cho Seung-Hui when he killed 32 people. Likewise, I don't think that they could envsioned in any way the carnage that happened at Virginia Tech. I believe that if they had any notion of what this amendment would have led to, the wording may have been drastically different.

I also can't figure this out: No one is asking for a ban on guns. All they want to know is who has them and waiting period to do a criminal/mental health check on the person who is buying it. That's it. No one wants to take their precious phallic symbols away. Now, that said, their government has carte blanche to tap their phones, it is even tracing the library books that people read, and they have their collective knickers in a twist because someone wants them to register their firearms.

I'd say they have a few larger problems than registering guns. But then, I'm Canadian.

What is happening to the bees?

Bee colonies are dying off in Europe, the United States and here in Canada. Colony Collapse, where all the bees leave the hive with no forwarding address, is happening both across the pond and south of the border. That doesn't seem to be the case in Canada *thus far* as the bees seem to have suffered from a wet fall, a long winter and infestations of parasitic bee mites. None the less, I don't think it would be out of place to call what is happening an epidemic.

If there are no bees, there is no pollination, no fruit, flowers, vegetables, and no life. Albert Einstein said:

Once the bees are gone, man would have only 4 years of life left.

Well, I have found that Albert never actually said that. Some things are wind pollenated, still, the prospect is not pretty.
Honey bee Deaths Sting Ontario Apiaries

Run, Bunnies, Run!!

5,000 Rabbits block Major Highway in Hungary

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - Five thousand rabbits blocked a Hungarian highway Monday after the truck that was carrying them crashed.

Up In Smoke

The Federal Dope Deal

Once upon a time, about 8 or so years ago, I was hospitalized for the first time in my life. While I was recovering, attached to an IV pole that I named "Sancho" a la Don Quixote, I would wander about the building. On a regular basis, a strange and somehow faintly familiar odour would assail my nostrils; bringing back memories of being in someone's basement on hot summer nights listening to Moody Blues records in the dark.

The days of my mispent youth aside, there was a man in the hospital at that time who had fought for and won the right to use medical marijuana. Unfortunately, while he had the right to use it, there was no legal supply available. None the less, it was brought to him on a daily basis from a source that no one asked about and the nursing staff simply closed the door to his room and pretended that nothing was happening.

The Federal Government has gone in the the Medical Marijuana business and pays "Prairie Plant Systems" to grow it in an abandoned mine shaft in Flin Flon Manitoba. According to records obtained under the Access to Information act, the cost to the patients is 15 times more than the government pays for the weed in the first place. In effect, the government has allowed the use of medical marijuana on one hand, and is placing it out of the reach of those who need it with the other. (I know that this sure isn't covered by my medical plan).

Health Canada, in turn, sells the marijuana to a small group of authorized users for $150 - plus GST - for each 30-gram bag of ground-up flowering tops, with a strength of up to 14 per cent THC, the main active ingredient. That works out to $5,000 for each kilogram, or a markup of more than 1,500 per cent.

To add insult to injury, I have been told that the government weed, in the immortal words of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, "couldn't get a fly high".

And we will likely never know why

33 Dead in "horrific" campus shooting

I was 11 years old when the first occurance happened: sniper Charles Whitman killed 14 people and injured dozens at University of Texas in August of 1966 and I remember it still. Then came Columbine, and for a time it seem that every 6 weeks, as regular as clockwork, there was a shooting at some high school in the states. We in Canada were not immune, there was Taber Alberta, and L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, and others. Now, frighteningly, it seems that there are too many occurances to list.

The thing is, there will never be a satisfactory answer to the question of "Why?" In the end, even if we could get inside the head of the shooter, we would not find an answer, because truly, there is no satisfactory answer. Were they suicidal and wanted to take a bunch of people with them? Did they want a "blaze of notoriety" that their lives otherwise would never have brought them? What is the "short circuit" in the brain that erases everything except the urge to kill, and then to die?

Street Preacher vows to stay loud and proud

Pawlowski believes the city is persecuting him because of his religious message.

The city of Calgary is prejudiced against our message of hope in the name of Jesus and there is some witch hunt against the cross," he said.

No, My dear, they are persecuting you because you are using a bullhorn and we godless heathen hordes would like a little peace and quiet as we go about our sinful ways.

History Repeats Itself

Sex workers Cashing in on Alberta's Oil Boom

If you look at the history of any "boom", the same thing happens over and over again: The Rush begins, the place fills up with a lot of men, most of whom have no ties to the community and have no intentions of putting down roots. A lot of them are single, but a good chunk are not and of those, they are not likely to have brought their wives and families with them. All they want to do is make their money and go home.

As a result, you have a situation where the men outnumber the women, there is a lot of money, not a lot of ways to spend it.

So, in the wake of the "gold rush" (or in this case, oil) came the liquor (or these days, drugs) and the dance hall girls (sex workers). It is a basic law of supply and demand: if there is a demand for something there will be supply. If you want to get rid of something; do away with the demand.

Now, when it comes to prostitution, I am a tad on the pragmatic side: No, that is a job that I would not like to do. However, I think that anything that goes on between two consenting adults is no one's business but their own and legislating morality is pretty much an exercise in futility. In the words of one of our former Prime Ministers, Pierre Elliot Trudeau: "the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation." I also know that there but for the grace of (insert name of diety here) go I, or for that matter any one of us.

Good bye June

You made us all stop and think.

June Callwood, Canada's social conscience dies at 82

I don't have power — I have influence," she said. "Power and privilege? It's an ability to help to change. My prominence is a trust."

If you sit by the E-bay website and watch

Sooner or Later, everything will be sold there.

Ebay says Pope's old car for sale

I knew Homeland Security Had to be good for something

It really must have been a slow day.

Alberta RCMP Enlist Help of U.S. Homeland Security to nab Pepperoni thiefs (SIC)

Later in the day, they arrested two teenagers in a wooded area with the help of an American aircraft with an infrared camera.

The RCMP probably could have used their help tracking down a trailer load of Moosehead Beer headed for Mexico back in 2004

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a Man with a Graphics Package

Minnesota Man Sentenced for Printing Lewd Stickers

The Epitome of Bad Taste

Just when you thought OJ would go away, after his publication of his book "If I did it" and the television interview was cancelled due to public outrage, the rights for the cursed thing are going up for auction next week.

What is worse is that the family of Ron Goldman really want it to be published. Why? For the money, of course!

Estate of Nicole Brown Simpson Doesn't want the OJ Book Published

Winning their Hearts and Minds

Canada offers forum for lecturer barred from U.S.

In short: A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States.

Cancer and birth defects are rising in epdemic proportions among Iraqi children since the first Gulf War. the University of Washington wanted Dr. Riyadh Lafta to speak there, but his requests for a visa went ignored. So, he was invited to speak at Simon Fraser.

Spent uranium coating, among other things, are the causes. There is nothing left in Iraq to use such weaponry against, yet still it is being used. And in Afghanistan too. In the years to come it will effect not only the children, but the vetrans of this war as well.

This is just another thing that Bush's propoganda machine does not wish Americans to know about. The effects of this poisoning will likely be felt years from now, just like agent orange, and likely denied, just like agent orange.