You are Entitled to Any Opinion as Long as It's Ours.

It seems that “Reefer Madness” is playing in Wawota, Saskatchewan, and I am not talking about the musical. It all started one find day in May when the school showed a supposedly “educational” video about the evils of the Demon Weed. One of young people who watched this presentation just didn’t buy it. It is not that Kieran King was in anyway advocating the use of marijuana, but rather that the alleged “facts” used in the video were wildly inaccurate. Read the whole story here:

Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts.

I find it to be extremely disheartening to find that the school system in Saskatchewan has not changed in any remarkable way in the 30 odd years since I last graced their classrooms. My recollection of my high school is that for the most part, it was a hotbed of apathy beginning with the teachers and flowing down to the student the student body. With few exceptions, the teachers often displayed less maturity than the students they were entrusted to teach.

In this one situation we have a remarkably bright young man who did something most of his peers could not be bothered to do - research and think. As a result, he came to some conclusions that the Powers That Be did not want him to know and certainly not share. At that point, the principal of the school, Susan Wilson, crapped her pants in fear of intellectual curiosity and made an Everest out of a proverbial mole hill.

Thank you, Susan Wilson, I am sure that the town of Wawota is utterly thrilled that you have made it a national laughingstock.

You have to work at it.

Atv rider struck, killed by train

Ok, Anonymous commenter

I will rewrite my blog post with what I do know as reflected in the article above:

The man in the article above was riding his atv on railway tracks, where he was hit by a train.

This act of thoughtlessness resulted in his death, and left behind friends and family who mourn his loss and one engineer who will have to live with a tragedy not of his making for the rest of his life.

Moral of the story: Tons of train cannot stop on a dime and atvs do not belong on railway tracks.

They are in the glove box, behind the maps

Stolen keys delay the start of military mission

"We had been told a 10 percent theft rate was likely in convoys brought in from Pakistan, but we had not expected the spare car keys to go missing," defense ministry spokesman Jaroslaw Rybak told news channel TVN24.

ooooook...........

Land of the Free, Home of the Litigious

Remember the McDonald's hot coffee law suit?

This is even sillier:

Judge Suing Washington, D.C., says Dry Cleaners must Honor all Demands

WASHINGTON (AP) - The customer is always right, said a judge who testified Wednesday in his US$54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner who lost his pants.

Mayors in trees

Since someone has already seen Jesus on the wall of a Tim Horton's in Cape Breton (or at least until they changed the light bulb) and the Virgin Mary on a billboard advertisement for a Pizza place, I can't really imagine that this is too strange:


Likeness of dead mayor seen in tree trunk.

"I see Jesus," said Cathy Sansone, the membership director at the health club who says any resemblance to the late mayor is simply the "power of suggestion."

No Matter How Thin You Slice it, it's Still McBaloney

I first read about this story over on Jame's Blog, and thought it was mildly entertaining and quite ridiculous. Now, as the saying goes, the story has "grown legs" and is developing a life of its own.

McDonald's is quite irate over the definition of "McJob" in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.

The term McJob was coined by the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland in his 1991 novel Generation X to describe a "low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector".

McDonald's has gone so far as to create an online petition that can be virtually "signed" by anyone supporting their view.

On The Current this morning there was an article aired on this topic, first to speak was a representative of Merriam-Webster's who said, in essence, it is not going to be changed.

However, the next person to speak was Jerry Newman, PHD who went "undercover" working as a "bottom rung" employee at various big name fast food place such as, yes, McDonald's and Burger King. Mr Newman contends that working in these places is a wonderful thing that teaches responsibility, teamwork, work ethics, and the list goes on. He even wrote a book on the subject: My Secret Life on the McJob - Lessons From Behind the Counter Guaranteed to Super Size Any Management Style. During the interview he painted a glorious life among the fries and McNuggets with almost an evangelical fervor that made me want to bring up my Wheatabix.

Now being the inquisitive sort, I followed the old adage of "follow the money" to see who was actually paying for this study of Professor Newman's. There it was, in the biographical notes of the above article as plain as day:

Jerry M. Newman, Ph.D., is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor for the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is the coauthor of Compensation, which has been the bestselling book in the category for 21 years. He is also an advisor to firms including AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Burger King, McDonald's, and Nabisco. (emphasis mine)

Yup, Just as I thought, paid for by the purveyors of Fast Food.

Now to be honest, the good Professor does bring up some valid points: working at those jobs does teach problem solving, work ethics, responsibility, teamwork, etc. Sure it does, I don't argue that one little bit. However, that said, those valuable "lessons" learned while on the job do not preclude it from being a "McJob" because the job itself is a dead end. Ask anyone who presently works at any fast food emporium where they want to be in 5 years. I would lay you good money they won't say: "Working for 'insert name of fast food place".

Let me prove my point in another way: How many people you ever heard say "My life's ambition is to work on the Front line at McDonalds?"

***************Crickets chirping******************
I thought so.

For all of his possibly good intentions and insights, in the 6 or so months Jerry Newman worked slinging Happy Meals, at the end of the day, he is a still tourist.

When his shift ended "the distinguished management professor" went home to his condo in Florida or his home in Amherst, back to his real life, and his real job. He was not stuck in the place where flipping burgers was "his real job." He has not gained one iota of insight into the real lives of the people who work the grills, the tedium of the job and the lack of any real future in those jobs.

Sorry, Mr Newman, I just don't buy your line: No matter how you dress it up: a McJob is still a McJob.

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?