Our current political situation is an aberration, an embarrassment to our normally great country. It will not be accepted as normal. This presentation was written by Jeremy Mitchell, with original music by Tom DeStefano.
Call out the instigators
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
Lock up the streets and houses
Because there’s something in the air
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
Hand out the arms and ammo
We’re going to blast our way through here
We’ve got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution’s here, and you know it’s right
And you know that it’s right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together
Now
An update on my honeybee hive. 24 days ago I hived New Zealand Arataki bees in Vancouver, BC. The queen has been busy laying eggs, and right on cue the brood is beginning to hatch. This vid includes 3 weekly reports from my hive plus a visit to my bee mentors’ hive.
By now you all know that the Pope has quit! WOW! That’s huge news. Pope Benedict the – how many Pope Benedicts have there been now? … oh yeah, 16 – he’s the first Pope to quit since Pope Gregory the 12 – man, what’s with re-using the same few names all the time? How about some originality: Pope TuPak, Pope Wiggens, Pope Goes-the-Weasel.
And that’s my point today. There’s a job opening! Which means there’s an opening for something new and exciting to rally the troops (nobody mention the Crusades, okay?). The Catholics have a once-in-a-lifetime … well, this will be the 7th Pope in my lifetime … anyway, it’s a rare opportunity to change it up.
We can have our first black Pope – if you don’t count Pope Victor the 1st from Africa.
Or we can have our first female Pope – if you don’t count the legendary Pope Joan from the 11th century.
We can have the first married Pope – if you don’t count St. Peter, St. Hormisdas, Adrian the 2nd, John the 17th, or Clement the 4th.
Hey – we can have the first Gay Pope – if you don’t count Paul the 2nd, Sixtus the 4th, Leo the 10th, Julius the 3rd, and God knows how many others.
Well, we’ve had at least 2 Popes who were teenagers, and at least one in his 90s. At least 3 Popes were the sons of Popes, and another was a Pope’s brother. One – John the 12th – wasn’t even a priest when he became Pope. There was even a French Pope once!
Hmmm… seems the Catholic Church has been pretty open-minded, after all. Which is why my resume will be in the mail this afternoon.
“Good evening. I am Stephen Hawking. Tonight I will explain my Theory of Relative TV. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, was a visionary. He once commissioned a study to see if it was possible to transmit pictures and sound through the air to be seen at another location through a viewing box. He concluded that the technologies were not yet available to accomplish such a feat. However, the task had been set in motion, and some decades later television was invented. First it was Black and White TV, and then color TV. Today we have cathode ray TV, LCD TV, plasma TV, and projection TV. Ralph Kramden finally has his 3-D TV. But so much of today’s 3-D is artificial, similar to early colorization. It’s a neat trick, but imperfect. Sound quality has not advanced as rapidly as picture quality. Speakers are still small. Digitized sound, like MP3 compression, sucks the big one. But none of this really matters. Notice the immense popularity of such low quality video such as Skype, phone cameras, and amateur on line videos. High end TV is a sham, important only for social status, bragging rights, and corporate profit. TV quality has in fact exceeded its practical purposes. Unless the picture and sound are distractingly bad, they are quickly ignored, no longer noticed after the first few moments of appreciation. Ultimately, the only quality that counts is in content. Well produced content looks good on any TV. I leave you now with a fine example of quality TV production.”
Remember the Flowbee? It was a personal haircutting “system” that attached to your vacuum cleaner. At a cost of $50, the Flowbee became a late night TV joke 20 plus years ago. What idiot would vacuum his hair?
Well, this idiot, for one. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. People have been laughing at me for over 20 years. Let me put it to you this way: One haircut a month. $20 a haircut. $5,000 in my pocket. Believe me, I’m laughing, too…
Picture, if you will, little Jimmy, a very shy 8 year old, suddenly being kissed in the playground by a pretty young girl who thinks he’s cute. The other kids taunt, sing little ditties about sitting in a tree, and even make crude remarks. Little Jimmy is mortified, and typical of 8 year old boys, he swears off girls forever.
Picture that it’s now two years later, and very shy little Jimmy is being beaten up in the boys bathroom by a big 13 year old screaming “queer” and “homo” and every known variant at Jimmy’s cowering, bleeding little body.
Now picture the well-meaning faculty that wants to deal with this. Of course the bully gets suspended for a couple of days and gets counselling. Nothing stops bullying better than a good hug, right? When little Jimmy gets out of the hospital, he learns that his teacher has read the riot act to his classmates in what his teacher believes is politically correct righteous indignation, protecting the rights of a downtrodden gay child.
“Tolerance is not enough in Jimmy’s situation.
We must understand that there is nothing wrong with being gay.
We must accept Jimmy’s homosexuality as a natural state.
We must embrace homosexuality, promote it.
Who knows – maybe you’re gay, too.
If you try it, maybe you’ll like it.
Put yourself in that role. How would you want to be treated?”
The school goes the extra mile for poor little gay Jimmy and notifies social services to keep an eye on Jimmy’s parents – you know, just in case they want to beat up Jimmy in the bathroom, too. Now there’s a file on little Jimmy’s parents. Now little Jimmy will be protected from any similar such domestic abuse from an intolerant family. If Jimmy displays so much as a bruise or scratch from home, he’ll be whisked away to the protective arms of institutionalized child care, never to see his family again except on alternate Wednesdays – under supervision.
But no matter. Little Jimmy’s parents eventually divorce over the nagging issue of which parent passed on the “gay gene” to little Jimmy.
From little Jimmy’s perspective, he’s being sucked into a vortex of confusion, a maelstrom of thoughts and actions that steer him directly into the waiting arms of adult gays, activists and even pedophiles who camp out at the receiving end of this public school indoctrination into the homosexual lifestyle.
So little Jimmy – a shy, obedient, impressionable 10 year old – is learning all the social excuses why he should be gay, yet learning nothing of the dire health and welfare consequences. He has become another recruit, another pawn in the gay lobby.
Personally, I think it’s simply criminal for a teacher – a hired public servant – to “out” any child as gay – whether or not they are actually gay. I think it’s detestable that these public servants are teaching your young children to experiment with life-threatening sexual choices. I think teacher’s unions and school boards are betraying our trust by kowtowing to political special interest groups and starting our children down a slippery slope of gender confusion greased by anal lubes, and fuelled by guilt and misplaced political correctness.
Shouldn’t our children be protected from bullies? The schoolyard variety, the activist variety, the institutional variety, and the politically correct variety?
Last week a study concluded that coffee is bad for you. According to – oh, who cares? Next week there’ll be a study concluding that coffee is good for you. And that will be followed by a negative study, which will be followed by a positive study, then negative, then positive, et cetera ad nausium, dominus vobiscum.
Every few weeks we get a report that coffee is good or coffee is bad and it all adds up to much ado about nothing. What a monumental waste of time and money – mostly taxpayer money, I suspect.
Look, I tossed all the results of all these reports into a Yahtzee cup and this is how they tumbled out:
> Moderate coffee drinking lowers the risk of heart disease. Heavy coffee drinking increases the risk of heart disease. No brainer, there. Everything in moderation.
> Coffee increases blood flow, curing headaches and delivering medicine quicker, yet coffee decreases blood vessel tone and function. Hmmm – a toss-up.
> Coffee, as a mild diuretic, can aid against constipation and other bowel problems, yet as a mild diuretic, it can contribute to dehydration if not enough water is consumed. Then again, coffee is nearly 100% water, so what’s the problem?
> Coffee can aid sleep. Coffee can disturb sleep. Now they’re just messing with us.
> Here’s a compilation of bad things about coffee – but they have qualifiers:
Coffee MIGHT increase the risk of hypertension, BUT mostly in people with high blood pressure.
Coffee MAY increase the risk of osteoporosis in women who drink it heavily and who have low calcium diets.
Coffee MAY cause bad breath – IF you drink it with milk.
I mean, come on…
Here are some more maybes and mights:
Coffee MIGHT cause rapid and/or irregular heartbeats.
Coffee MAY cause heartburn.
Coffee is mildly addictive, which means withdrawal MAY take a few days with headaches and restlessness. (I say don’t quit!)
And Coffee MIGHT stain your teeth.
Okay, in the “good for you” column, some rather decisive findings:
Coffee is chock full of Antioxidants, which slows ageing.
Coffee protects against Parkinson’s disease.
Coffee protects against Alzheimer’s disease.
Coffee protects against forming gallstones.
Coffee protects against forming kidney stones.
Coffee lowers the risk of Type 2 Diabetes in young-to-middle aged women.
Coffee protects against liver cirrhosis, especially alcoholic cirrhosis.
Coffee’s caffeine increases alertness and improves information processing.
Coffee relieves asthma symptoms.
Coffee’s starting to sound like a health drink, to me.
Look, here’s a chart of addictive drugs and their relative level of addictiveness. Let’s see, caffeine is… not even on the list!
Okay, here’s another chart. Hmm… caffeine didn’t rate here, either.
Oh – here’s one. See how high caffeine rates… oh wait, the higher the rating, the safer the drug is.
Well there you go. Of all the vices out there, coffee barely gets a mention. I say if you like coffee, drink it. And when a report comes out about coffee, ignore it. Your life will be simpler and happier and yes, you’ll sleep better for it.
A few days ago it was “Canada Day” here in Canada. Being an American, and therefore unschooled in third world civic holidays, I asked a Canadian friend what Canada Day was. He told me it was just like my Fourth of July.
Stop right there!
Canada is an independent country!? I remember gasping for air, reeling at the notion that I somehow missed an overnight bloodless coup. “When did this happen?”, I asked, swearing to myself that I’d never miss another 6 o’clock news broadcast.
“Oh, about a hundred years ago,” explained my northern friend.
Stop right there!
So there was no coup, after all.
I see… Did this guy actually believe that Canada was an independent country? I pressed the issue.
Pulling a fistful of change from my pocket, I asked whose picture is that on every single penny, nickel, dime, quarter, loonie and twoonie in my outstretched palm. For those of you who may not know, it’s the Queen of England. England. Pretty magnanimous of an “independent country” to put the mug of ANOTHER country’s leader on all their money.
I asked what province we were in. “British Columbia,” my friend admitted. Hmmm… British. And the street corner we happened to be on? “King Edward Avenue and Prince Albert Street,” he noted. Not far from Queen Elizabeth Park, I noted.
So, it turns out that when my Fourth of July celebrates my county’s booting out of King George III and his tax collectors to form an independent republic accountable to no other country in the world, Canada Day actually celebrates the union of three British North American colonies – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada – into one British federation of four provinces – Ontario and Quebec replacing the Province of Canada.
The British monarch has a permanent seat in Canada’s parliament. Canadian laws require the British monarch’s “royal ascent” to become valid. New Canadian citizens must swear an oath of allegiance to the British Monarch. In fact, Great Britain is soaked into every nook and cranny of this giant English muffin called Canada.
Apologists point out that technically the British monarch – currently Queen Elizabeth II – holds the separate title of “Queen of Canada,” but who are we kidding?
So I delicately pointed out to my American-wannabe friend that aside from fireworks, a day off from work, and lots of pointless political speeches, Canada Day and the Fourth of July are about as similar as fox hunting and baseball.
Poor Canada. So desperate for its own identity, yet far too weak and scared to move out of Mom’s basement.
I have tinnitus. Some call it “ringing in the ears”, but that’s just too cute a description for such a horrible affliction. A parakeet’s bell, wind chimes, little silver dinner bells…
Some describe their tinnitus as crickets in a field, or chirping frogs, or a constant wind. How pastoral. Not.
Some describe it as musical tones or electric humming. How melodic.
But for some of us, it’s like a jet engine revving up and down in our ears, from the left, the right, and both ears at once. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month… We can barely hear through the noise. We’re deafened by a racket you can’t hear at all, and we have no way to turn it off.
It makes me a little testy at times. I’ve approximated what I hear into this video’s soundtrack to give you an idea why.
Tinnitus is a relentless sound that only the sufferer can hear. And don’t say you sympathize unless you actually have it. Sympathy requires some degree of understanding, and you just wouldn’t understand unless it happens to you.
It keeps us awake at night because we can’t turn it off, and “masking” it only means trying to drown it out with more noise. It blocks out the sounds of birds chirping and cats purring and babies cooing and lovers whispering. It makes us incompetent on the phone and clumsy in face to face conversations. We can’t think straight. Our heads hurt. Our stress level skyrockets and our immune system crashes. We get confused, and we can’t remember simple things. We pound our heads and pull at our ears in frustration. We’re nudged closer and closer to the edge of sanity by the relentless noise.
You know why Van Gogh cut off his ear? Yep, tinnitus.
How many suicides are the result of tinnitus? How many diagnoses of madness, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, etc. are actually tinnitus? How many developmentally challenged children have tinnitus? How many divorces are caused by tinnitus? How many homeless are on the streets because of tinnitus? Authorities can’t hear the noise, so they probably don’t even consider the possible tinnitus factor.
Doctors can’t help. I don’t think they really try. There are known causes for a fraction of the cases: brain tumour, auditory neuropathy, Menier’s disease, hearing trauma, drug side effects… but for many of us, they don’t know the cause and they sure don’t know the solution. Yeah, plenty of “sure-fire” cures are offered – mostly by CHARLATANS who prey on the desperation of the afflicted. But nothing cures tinnitus.
Management is the best anybody can offer. Smoke and mirrors to trick your mind to look – or rather, listen – elsewhere. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, melatonin, copious amounts of alcohol, relaxation tapes, white noise, expensive customized hearing aids – anything to help get us through the next hour and to possibly give us a decent night’s sleep.
Doctors say that tens of millions of North Americans have tinnitus – which is true – but the very statement is a cold, callous dismissal of our condition as if the sheer number of victims is supposed to make any single one of us feel any better. Maybe we have to wait for enough doctors to get tinnitus before there’s serious research into this affliction.
And maybe a forward-thinking researcher will look into possible causes like stress, wifi, chemicals in our water, GMO foods, untested vaccinations forced on us, smart meters, allergies, cell phone radiation – or how about all of the above? I’d give it all up and live in a cave just to get rid of this infuriating noise. You would, too.
Sometimes the noises stop all by themselves. Rarely. But until it happens to you, it’s an elusive dream.
I’m offering no solution here. There are none. But you’d think with the motivation of curing a condition that afflicts hundreds of millions of people in the world – not to mention winning a Nobel Prize in medicine – some doctor somewhere would try to figure this out.
Meanwhile, you now have a clue why some people may seem a bit cranky or distracted at times, a bit less polite, less tactful, less patient.
It might even explain the trolls on YouTube.
Parting thought: how would you sleep if this was all you heard at night? …
There’s a relatively new – what? – art form? – called the “reaction video”. There are tons of them on YouTube. It’s when the camera is trained on somebody as they react to a video that they – not you – are watching. The latest spate of reaction video’s involves the quasi snuff film, “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” allegedly posted by Luka Magnotta, the already infamous kitten-killer that the police never bothered to arrest back in 2010. I’ll just refer to him as “The Moron”.
In the spirit of these reaction videos, I’m watching “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” as I record this commentary. I’ve seen this before, so forgive my clinical approach. I have a few things to say about this whole situation. First of all, if you don’t want to hear this, stop the video right now. While I believe that living with your head in the sand is the very reason so many bad people get away with doing bad things, I believe in an individual’s right to remain ignorant and oblivious.
If you choose to be enlightened – and exempt from jury duty – stay tuned… but please don’t go running to that army of grief and trauma counsellors once it’s over. What a crock that is! When in the long history of humanity did we suddenly become so fragile that we couldn’t cope with the concept that bad things happen in the world? In the ’60s, we saw dead and wounded Vietnam soldiers every night on the news. It’s credited with having caused the early and complete withdrawal from that heinous war. Sometimes we NEED to be sickened by the evils of Man.
So far this video has shown the victim nude and loosely bound, slowly rolling on a bed. It looks like he’s drugged. Then the video jumps to a different angle of the victim – now dead and partially decapitated – and “The Moron” stabs the body exactly 100 times. It’s not manic, not uncontrolled. Very deliberate. And we never actually see a murder.
We all know that defence lawyers are lining up around the block like teenies waiting to buy Justin Beiber tickets just to defend this Moron. Go for it; we all have the right to the best defence possible. But don’t try to pull the insanity card with this one.
He’s sick, yes, but he’s too calculating to be beyond reason. He knows right from wrong. His editing proves it. The fact that he promoted this video on YouTube 10 days before the murder proves it. And his flight to europe proves it.
Right now I’m seeing “The Moron” – and I’m sure the prosecution can reasonably prove it is Luka under that hoodie – use a knife on his poor victim, slowly slicing him, and – off camera – removing his head and limbs. This looks like on-the-fly editing. He’s turning the camera on and off at certain points of this crime. To me, that means he’s controlling exactly what we see. He has presence of mind throughout this exhibition.
And what we see is very familiar. There is overwhelming evidence here that “The Moron” is a copycat. An unimaginative, very untalented, copycat. The name of his video is “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick”, based on a 2007 viral video called “2 Girls, 1 Cup”, and a 2008 viral video called “3 Guys, 1 Hammer”, which is an actual snuff video.
So, derivative title, and derivative music. The song is from the movie “American Psycho”. Not very clever.
I’ll fast forward a bit.
Oh, here’s where “The Moron” allegedly has sex with his poor victim’s body. But its obviously faked. Sure, he uses the victim’s severed arm to play with himself first, but here “The Moron” is fully dressed and obviously not sexually aroused – he probably can’t rise to the occasion. He’s performing for the camera – for his intended audience… calculated premeditation.
Okay, and now we’re seeing the so-called cannibalism in the video. But this is faked, too. “The Moron” now cuts his victim with a fork and knife – so ineptly that he finally has to use his fingers to remove the piece and place it on the fork, which he merely holds in front of the camera.
Again, sanity rears it head as “The Moron” does not eat his victim. No evidence of cannibalism in this video.
You know, lazy police departments all over North America are trying to pin their own grisly murder cases on this Moron, but it just wouldn’t make sense. This guy is all about getting attention, so if he had done this sort of thing before, we’d all know about it. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other people out there who are chopping up people.
This sequence takes far too long, so I’ll fast forward.
Here “The Moron” places a dog – some people have suggested it’s a cat or rabbit, but you hear a dog whimper earlier in the video – he places a dog next to the poor victim’s torso and the dog begins to eat it.
And at this point I realized that “The Moron” had copied the entire video. “1 Lunatic, 1 Ice Pick” is an incredibly bad remake of Nacho Cerda’s critically acclaimed “Aftermath”, a short horror film with high praise for its cinematography. Every element – rubbing the victim’s face, mutilating and dissecting the body, the masturbation, photographing the corpse and the necrophilia, and feeding of the corpse to a pet dog happens in the exact same sequence. More proof that “The Moron” knows exactly what he’s doing.
I have to say this: Last year here at Vancouver’s Out On Screens film festival, they showed a well-promoted movie called “Life and Death of a Porno Gang”. While nobody was actually killed in the making of that movie, it still graphically – and relentlessly – showed rape, murder by bludgeoning, murder by chainsaw decapitation, sodomy, bestiality, necrophilia – and many more horrors than I care to mention here. That was considered entertainment, as was the film “Aftermath”.
Maybe today’s permissive society should be on trial here. “The Moron” isn’t a monster who spontaneously went mad and committed unthinkable atrocities. He’s a pathetic loser trying to get some attention, and who drew from a very public and permitted well of cinematic influences to get it.
Here in Canada, which is notoriously soft on crime, they’ll probably let this Moron out in 10 years or so, and he’ll finally cash in on his narcissistic behaviour by hosting some online horror film review website.
That is, until the animal rights people get to him.
Settle down, class. We have a little lesson today.
In 1802, a man in England named Humphry Davy invented the lightbulb – the first lightbulb. Over the next 75-plus years, a couple of dozen scientists invented their versions of lightbulbs. And in 1878, Thomas Edison purchased the patent to the latest lightbulb from scientists in Canada.
Two years later – 1880 – Thomas Edison “invented” the lightbulb!
Yeah, right. What he invented was something much bigger. What Thomas Edison invented was a way to apply planned obsolescence to unbridled corporate greed. He formed a company called General Electric, and they have since made gazillions of dollars selling something that’s going to burn out, so you have to buy a new one… which burns out, so you have to buy a new one… which burns out, so you have to buy a new one… yadda yadda yadda.
You figure “so what?” Free enterprise, right? Well, I don’t know. This is General Electric’s latest brochure, and it has me a little worried. Now watch this. It’s cool, but don’t let the smoke and mirrors trick you.
Here comes the sun!
That’s pretty neat… that’s hot! Now… this is one of the coolest things… I’m gonna close it because it makes too much noise… But watch this… That is way cool, isn’t it? But Thomas Edison did not invent that.
Anyway, my fear is General Electric’s going to somehow figure out how to charge us for sun and wind, and we’re going to be paying for the rest of our lives for something we grew up with for free.
Back during the Clinton administration, I made an audio version of the clip you are about to see. I produced the video version during the Bush administration. Since it’s an administrative statement and not a political statement, I didn’t expect there to be such a diverse range of opinions on the piece.
Since I travelled in generally liberal circles, people cheered “good for you!” for supporting Clinton and then jeered “how dare you?” for supporting Bush, when in fact I did neither. I figure people were just venting their true feelings towards the President du jour. I wonder how Obama will fare.
Here, have a look, and then tell me what you think…
Back in my school days, some of the kids picked on me for being gay. They’d call me the usual names, trip me in the hall, and instilled in me a lifelong fear of being beat up in a public bathroom.
I was an easy, obvious target for these pre-cancerous cells of society. I was shy, soft-spoken, not into sports, and my best friend was a girl who had her own very large boyfriend.
For me, being gay or straight wasn’t the issue. Being picked on was the issue.
What’s that all about, anyway? Why are so many guys afraid of gay guys? Gay guys won’t steal your girlfriend – if you even have a girlfriend tolerant enough to put up with your bigotry. And if a gay guy hits on you, just say no thanks. At least be thankful that somebody in the world finds you attractive.
Today’s kids are still picked on for being gay – whether or not they are. There are even some teachers who pick out a boy who “might” be gay and essentially tell him it’s okay to have sex with other boys. Isn’t that steering a kid’s sexual preference?
Worse than that, isn’t that just plain creepy, that a stranger, a hired educator, an adult is discussing sexual practices with a kid? Maybe you kid? No wonder the other kids taunt. And what would his parents think – especially when the teacher tells the kid to not tell his parents?
When I was in school, sex education was all about the science of procreation. Nowadays it’s becoming more about which anal lube to use and how to pump up the lobbying power of sex activists.
Now don’t go screaming “gay basher” or “homophobe.” I’m a bashee, remember? I just think kids should be kept safe from strangers with candy and hidden agendas. Just leave the kids alone, will you?
I’ve been reading articles recently that say that anywhere fro 30-80% of North Americans believe in global warming. Now, it strikes me that the vastly different estimates are far less interesting than the fact that they’re measuring “belief”. Is this like a monster under the bed sort of thing? If we don’t believe in global warming then it’ll go away?
Or is it more like a Santa Claus thing? Like making up a story to coerce “nice” behavior out of certain people?
Or is it more like a monster under the bed thing? If we don’t believe in global warming, and it’ll go away? Or it won’t. Or is it a marketing drive that relies on large consumer support?
Maybe it’s a Tinker Bell thing: clap for global warming and it will be true.
Is global warming a religion that depends on the faithful to thrive?
I don’t get it. Global warming is either real or it isn’t real, right? There’s plenty of evidence, right? Well, maybe not. But you gotta believe!
Now we have Mothers Against Climate Change – that’s right, People Against Weather. Try as I do, I can’t find any substance in their call for “action”. They want me to protest and to “send a message” and to “care for our children’s’ future”, but how does any of that change the weather?
I mean it; show me some cause and effect here. When I was a kid, Mister Wizard proved science to us every week on TV. It’s not enough to be against weather. Show me how you’re going to control it.
I think People Against Weather have a good cause – I really do. Rain can absolutely ruin a good weekend. And have you ever slipped into a car and your a.c. is on the blink and you’re in the middle of a heat wave? Don’t even think about touching the steering wheel! And snow – Vancouver didn’t get any during the Olympics, but got plenty of it the years before and after. Weather is a real bummer some times.
So yeah, maybe every summer I’ll believe in global warming, and every winter I won’t. But you People Against Weather, I’d stop tilting at windmills if I were you.
Dead birds are falling from the skies by the thousands! Tens of thousands more fish and crabs are washing up dead on beaches everywhere! Whales and dolphins are committing mass suicide!
The planet’s magnetic pole shifted 40 kilometers last year! Massive sink holes are swallowing cities! The icecaps are melting! Crazy weather – eclipses – Loonie parity with the US dollar – Snooki wrote a book!
What’s going on here? This can’t be blamed on cow farts, can it? Incandescent lightbulbs? Or the Sasquatchian carbon footprints of every human on Earth?
No, my friends, the actual cause of our global spin into oblivion is Lady Gaga.
Yes! The Mayans noted “Gaga” on the last date of their calendar. Nostradamus predicted Lady Gaga in a recent reconstruction of his notes. Even Paul the Psychic Octopus chose Lady Gaga as the Harbinger of Doom moments before he became calamari fra diavolo!
Yes, Lady Gaga, the woman who wore the dress made out of raw meat, the woman who puts live fireworks in her bra, the woman who bathes herself in blood while she sings, the woman who – cover your children’s ears – recorded a duet with Michael Bolton!
Perhaps without malice, this bleach blonde bisexual makes Madonna look like an old lady. Oh wait, Madonna is an old lady. Well, she’s over the top, anyway, and it’s throwing everything off balance.
If Lady Gaga plans a concert on December 21, 2012, we’re hooped! All I can say is gird your loins, my friends, gird your loins. The worst is yet to come!
On the other hand…
It’s a well-known fact that all these things – dead wildlife, the ever-shifting magnetic pole, unpredictable weather, eclipses, melting icecaps – all these things happen all the time. They’ve happened regularly throughout history. They’ll continue to happen. It’s just part of nature.
Not an alien invasion. Not a conspiracy. Not global warming. Not even Lady Gaga.
I just hope she avoids a December 21, 2012 concert. Better safe than sorry.
Have you heard of these “gender swap days” in public schools? I guess the teachers want our kids to get more in touch with their feminine or masculine sides, respectively. Or gay side. Or … aren’t there supposed to be like 6 genders nowadays? Let’s not exclude anybody!
Or is this to break down the natural boundaries of a kid’s self-identity? Remove their self esteem… confuse their role in society…
Or maybe maybe it’s just to recruit kids for political sex activism.
Whatever.
What this always turns out to be is a free pass to parody and demean the opposite sex, as well as once again pick on gays and lesbians. I mean, the poor transgendered kids are confused enough; why force them to dress according to their own gender? And do we really need to create MORE reasons for kids to bully each other in school?
Why are these events invariably promoted in pink? Not pink and blue, which might suggest the two genders that are being swapped. Not even a gender neutral green. Pink seems… shaded… toward a certain ideology, don’t you think?
But please: no more rainbows! Lucky Charms, My Little Pony, Peter Max, the Beatles, the Rainbow Coalition, Mac, [TV bars…] – yeah, that, too. The meaning of the rainbow has long ago become a contrived commercial joke.
What about really broadening our kids’ horizons? Psychologists are now saying that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation, akin to homosexuality. What about having pedophile-for-a-day? High school kids could hassle kindergardeners. Fun!
What about fat kids and skinny kids swapping for a day? Surely nobody would scorn a fat kid because he or she couldn’t pull off the switch convincingly!
Why not racial switch day? Black face isn’t insulting to anybody, is it?
What about religion swapping? Christians, Muslims, Jews and Atheists can all wear each others costumes and continue to condemn each other to Hell. No potential for mocking there, is there?
What about a rich / poor switcheroo? Nah, the poor kids couldn’t afford rich kid costumes, and the rich kids would never take public transportation to school.
What about physical disabilities? Kids can wear fake cleft lips, stutter, race down the halls in wheelchairs… lots of warm fuzzy affinity to be had, I’m sure.
Hey, what about dropping all the sex-themed costume parties and teaching our kids how to read and write? Isn’t that politically correct enough for you?
These kids need to get into college and then into the workplace, and unless they’re all planning to become costume designers and make-up artists, they need to concentrate on basic math skills, not how to accessorize.
Aren’t there mandates to keep politics out of public school classrooms? That should apply to political correctness, as well.
Can you believe that there’s a country that forces its children work in factories? Wages are 44 cents an hour. Unions are illegal. Government enforces censorship with violence. Critics of the government are thrown in dungeons. Tax fraud, theft and smuggling are punishable by death. Newspapers, books, and the Internet are severely censored. Religious and ethnic discrimination are state-sponsored. Women suffer forced abortions and sterilization to control the population.
Oh – I’m not talking about Cuba here. Iʼm describing China.
The U.S. has no problem with Americans visiting China, our chief supplier of poisoned dog food and lead-tainted toys – not to mention off-the-scale pollution and BILLIONS of cases of human rights violations. But Cuba? Americans can’t come here.
To be accurate, the U.S. does allow some Americans to visit Cuba. Cuban-Americans, reporters and politicians can apply for permission. Last year, about 6,000 permits were issued to Americans to visit Cuba. Last year more than 200,000 Americans actually visited Cuba.
Thank you, Canada. While American Customs agents are hassling me over my nail scissors and tube of toothpaste, Canada Customs [agents] were allowing me to exercise my free choice. And Cuban Customs [agents] do NOT stamp American passports. Come on down!
All this is done on the wink-wink, nudge-nudge level. While Iʼd like to see Canada grow a pair and tell the U.S. to drop this sham embargo, I can understand why Canada doesn’t want to give lose the revenue of a quarter million round trip vacation packages to Cuba every year.
The United States lies that this is a United Nations-backed embargo. Letʼs see, the latest UN vote was 173 countries against the embargo, and 3 for it. Three. The United States, Israel, and the Marshall Islands. Thereʼs a country called the Marshal Islands?
The Governator – Arnold Schwarzenegger – and President Bill Clinton love their Cuban cigars, but YOU canʼt have any. So whoʼs really being punished?
The details hurt my head – admit it, they give you a headache, too. If we actually paid attention to whoʼs paying off whom, weʼd all demand that this absurdity stop immediately. Or as American voters, weʼd have to accept culpability for Americaʼs unjust management of embargoes.
Whoa – that was way too many syllables. Iʼm on vacation, after all. Hey Fidel, another mojito over here, por favor.
