February Blahs

February seems to be a weird time for holidays; in Ontario alone, we have Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Family Day, plus as a crossing guard I have a P.D. day at the end of the month. I've already kind of gone after Valentine's Day, so I'll go after the others one by one.

First of all, I've never understood the big deal behind Groundhog Day. Well, actually that's not quite true, I used to buy into it, but I kind of outgrew that along with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. First of all, I just don't understand how a rodent seeing its shadow is supposed to have ANYTHING to do with whether we're in for an early spring or not. Maybe this is one of those things that's aimed at the kids, I don't know. How else can you explain celebrating a preposterous forecasting method, that has 40% accuracy? My cat constantly flinches at things that only he can see, but that doesn't mean I think he can predict tornadoes.

The second one, is Family Day. If you don't live in Ontario, you've probably never heard of this, and that's because it was literally made up by Premier Dalton McGuinty as an election promise. As the name implies, Family Day is supposed to give Ontario citizens a day to spend with their families... it makes it sound like we're all in jail the rest of the time, doesn't it? Where do I start, on this one? The name is repulsive, the whole idea is patronizing and redundant (at least in homes where the families actually have an inclination to TALK TO EACH OTHER), and to make it even more stupid, the only people who can take advantage of this are people who work for the government! Great! An extra holiday, for people who already work a fraction of the time that everyone else does (and remember I speak from experience here).

Now before I go, I want to say one last thing about Valentine's Day. At the risk of making a plug, Boston Pizza has this thing going on, where on Valentine's Day you can buy a heart-shaped pizza and the proceeds go to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. This is a really big deal, heart trouble can happen to anyone, at any time. That's why my friends and family support this every year. Pizza with a date may seem cheap the rest of the time, but on February 14th it can save someone's life. That's it for me.

Toddlers and Tiaras

I've never been that thrilled with beauty pageants, to begin with. After JonBenet Ramsey's rape and murder, I got even more uncomfortable with the ones that are aimed at children. Well, as I'm sure a lot of you know by now, there's a brand new TV show on The Learning Channel, about beauty pageants for pre-schoolers and kindergarteners. It's called "Toddlers and Tiaras", and is already catching a lot of heat for seeming to celebrate the exploitation of small girls. Now, I'm not one to rush to judgment if I can avoid it, but I've got to say, when I found the show online, to research this rant... I was honestly sickened in the first fifteen seconds.

The teaser in the opening credits alone shows shot after shot, of girls no older than seven, not only being dolled up in these overly precious clothes and being airbrushed like a motorcycle, but being coached into giving forced, sometimes dead smiles (occasionally to the point of crying). Then, there are the many shots of these girls being paraded in swimsuits and short skirts, being told to make very suggestive dance moves.

Those who've been following my rants from the beginning, know that one of my all-time pet peeves, is parents who treat their kids like walking toys, rather than living human beings. The behaviour seen on this show is perfect example of what I'm talking about: self-absorbed drama queens who are so obsessed with using their kids as status symbols, that they were berate and brainwash them into thinking that being a pre-teen pin-up model is the only thing that matters in life. And don't even get me started on how every pedophile with Tivo or a VCR has probably recorded every single episode of this crap. I realize that the show has only so much control over what they document, but why is it too much to ask that someone thinks about how much this continues to sexualize children who ought to be more concerned about playing hopscotch.

We live in an age where it is already way too easy to see kids being used sexually, not only by the kind of predators that get arrested every day, but by the commercial pedophiles who see nothing wrong with selling 8 year olds shirts that say things like "Sexy 69", or having them both in skin-tight outfits, with the slogan "Lickable" (supposedly referring to ice cream). Why are parents and the media making this even easier? Do these people honestly not understand what they're doing, or do they not care?

Either way, if this bothers you, I strongly urge you to contact The Learning Channel and the Discovery Networks to complain about this. If this still goes on, let's all call the FCC, or the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. They claim to be trying to keep our airwaves safe for family viewing, it's time for them to put their money with their mouths are. That's it for me.

THAT'S Amore?

I accidentally deleted the script for this video (which is what my rants lately usually consist of), so please follow this link...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqAd4Emn-jg

Phreaking Bell...

There this thing that's been talked about a lot, lately, called "Phreaking". Basically, it's a kind of hacking, where someone taps into a voice-mail system, and in the space of a few minutes, places hour-long phone calls to countries all over the world. This is happening to homes and businesses all over Ontario, with bills thousands of dollars (the highest that I know of is $220,000). But here's the best part, if you happen to be a Bell customer: it knows for a fact that this fraud is happening, and that it's definitely not being done by the owners of the phone line, but those customers are still on the hook for that money.

I swear, only in business law could something that stupid happen. Imagine, if you will, a scenario like this: someone breaks into your house, steals your wallet and I.D., and before leaving, kills someone on your property. All the while, there are eyewitnesses and documents proving that you were nowhere near your house at the time. However, by Bell's logic, you could still be charged with that murder. Where the hell does that make any sense?

Making it even better -- and I use the term loosely -- is that Bell recently took out a full page ad in the newspapers, warning its customers about the phreaking problem, but also stating that company policy is to hold customers responsible for all activity on the phone line. That's quite an effort to say "Sucks to be you." Evidently, this company doesn't believe in efficiency, much more than it believes in ethics, customer service, or public relations. Oh by the way, isn't it against the law to profit from a crime?

Right about now, you're probably asking what can be done about it. Well, if this has already happened to you, that's a really good question; a class action lawsuit against Bell is in the works, but since Canada's telecommunications authority -- conveniently -- has no jurisdiction on long-distance calls, and our federal government is refusing to get involved at the moment, I have no idea how far such a lawsuit can go. Now, if you haven't had this happen to you, but you own a voice-mail system, the general suggestion is to change your password as often as possible, and make it a fairly long and complex one. I would also like to add another suggestion: don't buy anything from Bell! That's enough from me.

Oh FFS, Canada!

Remember how I said that sometimes, doing these rants, I run into stories that are just plain weird? Well, I've got another one for you. There's a small town in New Brunswick called Belleisle, and their elementary school is no longer allowed to sing "O Canada" every morning. When I first heard this, I thought it was one of those hoaxes that you sometimes get in the e-mail, but apparently this is really going on. According to the principal who made this decision, a lot of parents didn't want their kids singing it every day.

Now, since this will probably lead to a lot of very ignorant comments, let me start this by saying, I think that nationalism is highly overrated. One reason is because it's just a step or two below fanaticism and racism (just ask a Jew who lived in Europe in the 1930s). The other reason is because pretty much every country on the planet thinks that it's the best one, yet any critical look at the world around you will show you that at least one other country has got it better than yours. In any case, as my Christmas episode made clear, I'm not one who thinks that just because a group is of the majority, they have the right to force beliefs upon the rest of the population. That being said, the idea of dropping the national anthem from a grade school, because apparently some people have a problem with it being sung, is a little strange to me.

I should point out that the exact source of the complaint has been very vague in the press, but I'm going to guess for the moment that this is being brought up by -- or at least blamed on -- some recent immigrants. If that's the case, I must ask: if you have a problem with your new neighbours singing with pride about the place you apparently chose to live in, why are you there in the first place? It would be kind of like me moving to The Bible Belt and demanding that all the churches be closed; it's pompous, it's childish, and all it does is cause unnecessary problems. We all need to learn to put up with each other to some extent, in order to survive. It's a fact of life -- ironically, something that's usually expected of kids, at school.

The really goofy thing about this, to me, is that even if you have some sort of moral issue with singing a national anthem, dropping it is complete overkill. When I was a kid, I didn't sing the anthem much, either -- mind you, that was because I don't like singing in public. Nine times out of ten, other people aren't that picky about whether or not you actually sing the anthem, so much as you standing and showing respect. Why is that so much to ask? If nothing else, you can use that time to reflect on and be thankful for the life and freedom that you have. Enough said.

Liberal Doublespeak

Well, thanks to Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, the budget from Emperor Harper is going through. Mikey said that there was a lot about it that he hated, but he's giving the Tories his support. Well that's just fricking great. Maybe he was trying to be pragmatic, so that at least something's being done about the economy, but then what's the point of all the posturing and criticism, if you're not going to follow through on it? Especially since Ignatieff knows full well that Harper is known for bullying the opposition like they don't matter, and sneaking sleazy tricks into the fine print. Simply put, Harper can't be trusted to serve this country, The Liberals know it, but they're giving them a free ride... suddenly I feel like Elmer Fudd has gave us to Jack the Ripper. Enough said.

Patriotically Ignorant

Later this week, the Canadian Parliament will be re-opening, following a truly stupid move by Emperor Harper that nearly tore this country apart. Instead of doing something constructive about the economy, like he said he would, Harper and the Conservatives decided to gut funding to progressive interests, as well as the opposition parties. This would effectively bankrupt them, and Harper knew it. So, not surprisingly, the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc were outraged, and joined forces to all but boot Harper out of power. Knowing that he was in trouble, that little chicken shit talked the Governor General into suspending Parliament for a couple of months, and here we are. While some of the initial dust has settled, it's still amazing that a lot of Canadians actually supported Harper over this.

When Canadians were fighting each other over this thing, in December, a poll was taken, which revealed that over half of the people in this country literally had no idea how our system of government works. This would certainly explain some of the comments I heard, which I'll get to in a minute. The thing that's really astonishing, though, is some of what they got wrong; for instance, most Canadians seemed to think that we actually vote for the Prime Minister directly, but anyone who's voted in an election knows that this isn't true. This leads me to wonder, how many of the people who are calling the coalition undemocratic, or illegal, have ever actually voted in their lives?

You see, Canada's government is what's called a Parliamentary Democracy. In plain language, this means that when elections are held, people don't vote for the government, they vote for a particular person who will speak for them in Ottawa. The government is made up of the party with the most seats, not necessarily the party with the most overall support, which is why the Tories are now in power with less than half of the popular vote. Therefore, the government is only in power, as long as most of Parliament votes for whatever they try to do. Once the government loses a major vote, such as the budget, that's called a non-confidence vote -- in other words, the government is fired on our behalf. When that happens, the result is either an election, or a coalition government made up of two or more opposition parties -- look up the Canadian Constitution, if you don't believe me. The point is, the alliance formed by the Liberals and NDP is not only completely legal, but it is actually a more accurate reflection of how the public really voted.

But, you'd never see a bunch of control freaks like the Harper government admit to that, so they been spending the last two months lying to the public about it. In addition to the bullshit about it being illegal, they claim the coalition is un-Canadian, given that it involves the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Now, leaving aside for a minute that our current government was formed partly by a Western separatist party, I should point out that every government since the Bloc's creation -- including Harper's -- has consulted the Bloc on several matters. Harper's hypocrisy about the coalition is even more interesting, when you consider that on September 9, 2004, he actually formed one himself, when he was in opposition. By the way, guess who one of his partners was? The Bloc Quebecois!

So Canada, when the government tries again to force its lies down your throat, keep in mind that they are, as usual, saying one thing and then doing another. For instance, one of their ministers, John Baird, recently stated that he thinks the Conservatives can just ignore the rule of Parliament -- so who's really undemocratic here? He also stated that the Conservatives can go over the head of our real head of state, Governor General Michaelle Jean -- who's really being criminal and un-Canadian, especially since that's very close to High Treason? Finally, who really isn't up to the job, when our so-called Prime Minister literally has to be threatened into helping his countrymen? People, we must stand on guard for this country, and each other, otherwise all of the freedom that we supposedly stand for, means nothing; Canada would be anything but glorious and free. Enough said.