January 27, 2010

No, look what YOU did.

The Next Door Neighbour Guy is somewhat less than diligent in cleaning up the deposits that his big black Labrador Retriever named Bubba leaves in the yards on our street.

(Our landlady, initially confused as to whether NDNG's dog or Two Doors Down Guy's dog Kiwi was responsible, once posted a large sign in the yard: CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR PETS IMMEDIATELY. Not that it helped.)














I was standing on my front patio yesterday trying to remember where I'd put the shovel, when NDNG pulled up and he and Bubba got out of their truck. NDNG walked up to greet me and strode through our shared front yard to shake my hand. As he got to the edge of my patio, he planted his left foot in the middle of a heaping helping of Bubbaturd.

"Oh, Bubba," NDNG said, turning to his dog. "Look what you did."

He wiped off his shoe on the grass, excused himself and went inside.

And I need to find that shovel.

January 24, 2010

With a name like that, is it even a sport?

The Lovely Mrs. byoolin's trebuchet asked me if I knew the internet meme that goes something like, "We [i.e., Canadians] will explain curling to you [i.e., Americans] when you explain the NRA to us."

She was taken aback that I had no idea what she was talking about. I frequently have no idea what she's talking about, but, bless her heart, the novelty does not seem to wear off.

She posited that the meme is flawed and that if it were hers to rewrite, she'd replace "the NRA" with "NASCAR." She provided a rational explanation, supporting documentation and, for all I know, may have hired McKinsey to consult on the issue.

Well, if it were mine to rewrite, I'd do it like this:

"We [i.e., Canadians] will NEVER explain curling to you [i.e., Americans]. We saw what happened with hockey: the FOX puck, obnoxious music between face-offs, advertising on the rink boards and a team in Phoenix Arifreakingzona, for crying out loud. If we explain curling, the next thing you know, there'll be cheerleaders on the edges of each sheet, Bud Lite logos on the rocks and the ESPN highlight reel will feature The Dirt Devil Sweep Of The Night."

Of course, this whole internet meme hinges on the absurd idea that there is anyone in America interested enough in curling to bother to ask someone to explain it. Can you imagine the pitch to the executives at FOX sports?

"It's got the strategy of chess and the patience of soccer, and it's on ice!"

January 5, 2010

Let's save some hate for Guam, people.

In Chambers County, Texas, three Puerto Rican men are in custody, charged with stabbing to death a man who had let them stay in his trailer.

Horrific crimes like this almost inevitably lead to a show of force from the peanut-brain gallery.

Searcher61 wrote:

No reverence or value on human life. See what you want, TAKE it! "American Dream," INDEED! OUR American Dream is to DEPORT those who come here illegally to take advantage of OUR hard work, and to ELIMINATE those who come here illegally to take advantage of us AND kill us when we try to help them!...

lea1 wrote:

How long will will let these people come to our country? seems when they said where they were from "Devillier" would have asked about their legal status in our country... coming to our country for the illegals means food stamps,free medical care, and rights that we as americans do not have. It also means they can rob and kill and then move on.

sk134 wrote:

This is one reason why law officers should be able to ask the simple question :Are you here legally? If he could have asked, perhaps a man would be alive today.

Danzmark wrote:

Time to throw ALL these illegals out ! The American Dream doesn't include the rest of the Americans letting these parasites sneak in.


But my favourite comment comes early in the stream of invective, from the 10th person to comment.
Bear1949 wrote:

ILLEGAL ALIENS doing what they do best, KILLING AMERICAN citizens.


That's my favourite comment because only 13 minutes earlier, the very first commenter made a bold prediction.
CheeryEyed wrote:

I despise Puerto Ricans for whining that they can't be a state nor can they be independent. That said, I'm waiting for the idiots to call these goons illegals.


What CheeryEyed is hinting at, of course, is that Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States and - since 1917 - people born in Puerto Rico are American citizens.

January 3, 2010

The peanut-brain gallery speaks.

In Decatur, Georgia, a 4-year-old boy was killed by a bullet from celebratory gunfire while attending a New Year’s Eve church service. The bullet is believed to have come from a weapon fired into the air before it pierced the church roof and struck the boy in the head.

We can be grateful to one of the website's commentators for immediately identifying the salient issue:

What is the church roof made of...Saran Wrap? Once the bullet makes its way down towards earth and hits the roof, there should be enough friction force on the bullet to slow it down before it completely exits the roof material.

Jan. 1, 2010 7:50pm EST | from trizone

January 2, 2010

"Join The Discussion." (But try not to get too much spit on your monitor.)

Adapted from a letter I sent to the editor of The Globe And Mail earlier this week.

It's time for news organizations' websites to discontinue the practice of offering their readers the opportunity to comment on the stories they publish.

Billed as a way for a site's readers to share their thoughts, in reality the commenters rarely contribute anything thoughtful or worthwhile. Rather, the comments are frequently puerile, juvenile, inane and banal, and all too often they are simply hateful, vulgar, and offensive. Today's exemplar: theglobeandmail.com, the website of The Globe And Mail newspaper, "a blue-chip brand whose credibility is unchallenged... [and] universally recognized as Canada's newspaper of record."

Last Tuesday in Ottawa, a police constable named Eric Czapnik was stabbed to death as he did paperwork in his cruiser. A few hours later, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer on leave because of mental health issues was charged with his homicide. The comments section of the Globe And Mail's story provided a disturbing insight into how the feature has devolved. By 10pm that night, 28 of the 218 comments posted were deleted by The Globe's editors for content "not consistent with [The Globe's] guidelines." Many of those that remained were little more than malice-filled expressions of the commenters' personal biases.

Two commenters agree - before an arrest is announced - that the suspect "was either on probation, parole, or bail... AND he was unemployed and contributing nothing to society." Another speculates later that the suspect "wanted to die 'death by cop' style" but "didn't have guts" to kill himself. Yet another seems to imply that Const. Czapnik's murder and the death of Robert Dziekanski in 2007 is part of some kind of RCMP-organized attack on Poles; that writer might be on the same page as the one who believes that RCMP officers have "been given a blank cheque to cover up all their past murders." And there's no shortage of commenters calling one another "idiot" or "mental midget."

This sort of thing isn't isolated. Pick an online story at random and you're almost guaranteed to find something: airport delays? Let's call Muslims terrorists. Fired at age 42 for being too old? Let's make a crack about global warming. Unemployed at 59? Let's mock you because you were in a union. Gym memberships? "This is the most insipid drivel I have ever had the misfortune to read."

The Globe And Mail invites its readers to "Join The Discussion," but these people are uninterested in discussing anything. They just want another forum for their bilious, vitriolic, racist hatemongering. And websites like The Globe And Mail seem to be happy to give them one.