November 11

So my Kittens, let me ask you something. How would you like to be the person who has to tell those three fine fellows up there that they are not worthy of our respect, admiration and gratitude for the freedoms that we currently enjoy?

No takers? Oh come on now Kittens. One of you should go tell at least one of those men that we just aren’t interested in anything they have ever done, or the sacrifices they made and the great bravery they exhibited to make sure that the world was safe for the, their children and their grandchildren. The latter being many of you. You know, the people who are sitting around right now free to read the words on this blog that I am lucky enough to be free to write. In comfy chairs that we are free to own and lucky enough to be able to stand up and walk away from whenever we damned well feel like it.

Somebody please tell those brave men that we simply just don’t give a flying fuck anymore and we have better things to do and celebrate. Important stuff like spending four whole days in the spring celebrating a cartoon bunny that has a spastic colon and craps out Cadbury eggs because it makes some people better Christian soldiers.

Still no takers? Does this mean that my Kittens are really just a bunch of pussies? Hopefully it doesn’t mean that at all, but in fact that you are a wee bit wiser and have more respect for these men. Our Grandparents and Great Grandparents. I say parents because let’s be true to history Kittens, Sure the boys went to fight, but the women fought plenty of battles as well.

Kittens just in case you haven’t been paying any attention to the news that isn’t about a media created mass hysteria regarding H1N1, or their lack of any journalism regarding any actual analytics about the people who in fact have been effected by it you may have missed two rather important stories.

This coming Wednesday on November the 11 it is Remembrance day. As well, 20 years ago today there was a bit of a tiny sort of rather large moment in the world and for freedom when the Berlin Wall fell. Actually the latter isn’t true. The Berlin Wall didn’t fall down. Germans are known for a few things and one of them is being fairly good at engineering. It didn’t fall down all on it’s own. That was a very strong wall. People tore it down with their bare hands because they wanted their freedom from oppression.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a great moment in human history that almost wasn’t Kittens. The very same year in another communist country there was another protest that didn’t work out quite so well. That as 20 years ago in Tiananmen Square and instead of a wall being destroyed and people being able to go out for a cheeseburger for the first time since 1961, they were massacred in the streets for all of the world to see on television by their own government. That’s how it goes with revolution Kittens, sometimes you win and get to have anniversary celebrations, and then sometimes you loose and are massacred while the rest of the world still buys sneakers from the people who did the massacring.

The people who tore down the Berlin Wall did so because they had quite enough of living under government oppression, thank you very much. The folks in Tiananmen Square thought the same thing during the same year. The Germans won their freedom and communism all over the eastern bloc fell along with the wall.

The Chinese government had other ideas earlier in the year so when students decided to peacefully protest in Tiananmen Square their government slaughtered them for their troubles. A few years later and after making sure we continued to buy our rubber dog shit and day-glo dildos from them, we still love China. We give them things like the Olympics and all of our debt.

Not to worry though Kittens. We gave those silly German commies their come-uppins as well. Take that fuckers!

You see Kittens as Tiananmen Square and the Berlin Wall have shown us, some times revolutions don’t always go your way. Sometimes the good guys win, sometimes the bad guys win. That is just how life goes. The Berlin Wall, and the people of east Germany could have been killed in the streets exactly the same way the people in China were killed. The same ideology was holding all of the marbles. The communists were in charge in both places and there were very different results.

Let us never take victory over tyranny for granted ever again. Today the folks in Germany are free to go buy sneakers made in China and make some nice German cars and sausage as well as a beer that they claim will give you a boner. The people in China are not even allowed to Google things like Tiananmen Square without getting a painful visit from the state police usually accompanied with a long term chit chat in one of their prison cells.

The world loves talking about the Berlin Wall this week, and they should. It was a big moment and the entire planet benefited from the end of communism in the eastern bloc. We should all be proud that it happened. We should all also be ashamed of Tiananmen Square and our continuing participation of buying televisions from a country that has a Berlin Wall of its own yet to fall. We are still nations of people with high definition televisions and low definition viewers.

The men who fought to secure our freedoms here in the west didn’t know that they were gong to win. Just like the Berlin wall and Tiananmen Square it could have gone either way. Most of them thankfully came home standing tall on their feet, but many of them also came home home feet first in boxes.

That is just how it goes. Many of the men in my own family aren’t around to celebrate Remembrance Day this or any year because hey are too busy being very dead because of war and thus…umm….remembered.

This my Kittens is a list of all holidays in my home country for this year, 2009.

New Year (Jan 01 2009)

Family Day (Feb 16 2009)

Good Friday (Apr 10 2009)

Easter Monday (Apr 13 2009)

Victoria Day (May 18 2009)

Canada Day (Jul 01 2009)

Civic (Aug 03 2009)

Labour Day (Sep 07 2009)

Thanksgiving Day (Oct 12 2009)

Christmas (Dec 25 2009)

Boxing Day (Dec 26 2009)

We can manage to have holidays for bunnies, some guy who some people believe in, the day afterwards to throw out all of the boxes that were used as presents that were also made in China, Thanksgiving where we take a day off to celebrate our little game of genocide against the natives, a civic holiday so we can go to the cottage, drink beer and be civic about things, an old Queens birthday who nobody really knows about, the fact that we are Canadian, if we do or do not have a family, being labourers and having to buy a new calendar because at midnight it is not just a different month, but a whole brand new year presumably because they only get better with age. Kind of like wine or Liza Minelli.

We can’t however seem to even manage to offer the people who made sure we didn’t have to goose steps our kids to school, or be forced to dress up in matching drab brown uniforms and name them ToJo a day off from work so that instead of just buyng a poppy actually go and spend some time with them. You know, actually have a day off of work to go and spend some time with our Grandparent veterans and say “Hello, let’s go have some lunch, I love you, thank you.”

We can’t even have a day off so that if we aren’t lucky enough to live near our Grandparents to be able to spend a few hours with them on the phone to say hello. For our children to have the day off of school to talk to them and to attend a proper ceremony to understand that war is hell and those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

A day off not to teach our children that war is glorious or that the people who have made sacrifices on our behalf are somehow better than us, but that they did it not knowing whether they would win or not and that we must always learn from their examples so that we will never ever have to fight a global (or hopefully any) war ever again.

For the last week Google has been being clever little Googlers and posting pictures of Sesame Street characters in their logo to celebrate 40 years of the Cookie Monster. This is nice. 40 years of Sesame Street is lovely. Everybody loves goofy puppets who talk and move around because somebody else has a hand up their assholes and is doing all of the actual puppetering right?

Ooooops….that’s not it….

…dammit……I did it again….

…whew!!!! Finally!!!

On Google there has not been one word about Remembrance Day. Plenty of Muppets, but not one mention of Remembrance Day.

Two things have stuck out in two days about Remembrance Day this year my Kittens. Yesterday the good lady missus nd I were out wandering around our neighborhood looking at things we look at every day when suddenly we weren’t allowed to look or walk anymore because some people were making a movie.

This is Toronto so this is an annoyance that we are fairly used to but never ever ceases to piss us off. Sort of like people from the suburbs who flock here every weekend to shop in the mall as if somehow it has a more exotic food court and to pollute our city with their weekend trips to the clubs. You know, because a club in the city with a VIP room filled with dead eyed whores and crotch grabbing cologne drenched cro-magnon import car vermin are somehow better than the ones where they live.

There were tons of people watching the people make a movie. They had pretend cop cars, pretend firetrucks and pretend rain.

Down the street at the local church (a place I tend to avoid at all costs) there was a Remembrance Day ceremony going on. They had real soldiers with real instruments on real horses with real guns and real bells.

Guess which event drew the greater amount of spectators.

You guessed it, the latest Steven Segal and Pauly Shore movie.

This morning while I was Googling something and looking at their latest Muppet tribute I asked my youngest son if their school was doing anything for Remembrance Day. Guess what he told me.

Nope.

In fairness he said no, but that he also wasn’ sure but he did tell me that as far as he knew that nothing was planned. At all.

This school taught them about Martin Luther King Jr but failed to mention the bits about how other men and women sacrificed themselves for our freedoms who if they are lucky are still alive and even luckier, may be related to so that they can hear their stories and learn their lessons along with receive their love.

War sucks Kittens. You don’t have to be a greasy natural fibre loving drum circle enthusiast yoga teacher to know this. Our Grandparents know this better than anyone else because they fought for our freedoms and if you are looking for anyone who is against war, they are usually the best example and if you haven’t noticed since they returned from war….they haven’t started any, but their kids who watched Sesame Street sure have.

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The Shipping News

Why, why, why, why dammit why will these fucking people just not give me my black coffee in the morning? It baffles me Kittens. How can it be possible that every day for a year the same people who see me and take the same order of one large black coffee not manage to actually just give me a black cup of coffee every morning?

Why Kittens, because if it is impossible to accomplish one of lifes easiest possible tasks, making a regular customer one large black coffee every day at the same time for an entire year it is also impossible to accomplish something else that you would think would be a fairly benign and simple task. Stopping a few men in rowboats with some guns made out of old mule wagon parts from seizing massive vessels on the ocean and then having entire heavily armed western countries not be able to ask them to please stop.

Somalia: Pirates Seek $7 Million for British Couple

The BBC reported that a man claiming to be a spokesman for Somali pirates had demanded a $7 million ransom for a British couple seized from their 38-foot sailboat off the Seychelles a week ago. In a taped telephone call to the BBC, the man demanding the payment, speaking English, said that “We only need a little amount of $7 million,” and that the couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, 58 and 55, would not be harmed unless the pirates were attacked by the Western naval task force that was shadowing them. Asked why so much money had been demanded for the crew of a private sailboat, the pirate said past “NATO operations” had “destroyed a lot of equipment” and resulted in the deaths and capture of other pirates. “So when you consider the amount of damage, the sum is not big,” he said. Earlier, Mrs. Chandler, above left, in a telephone call to relatives, said the pirates were treating the couple well.

Kittens as a part of an experiment I have just returned from the local coffee shop that employs two people who every day for a year, when I ask them for a large black coffee cannot manage to give me one without asking me what size I would like, or how much milk or sugar I want in my large black coffee. I didn’t go there just to order and eventually get a coffee after much explanation and negotiations, I went there to ask the people who cannot just get me a black coffee what they thought about this story.

I ordered my coffee and then while they were trying to figure out what a large black coffee is, I told them about this couple and the Somali pirates as it was told in the NY Times.

One of the workers asked “What were these people doing sailing where they knew pirates were?”

A reasonable question indeed.

The other worker asked me “Why does not England just send a war ship there and get them?”

Certainly another reasonable question and it made my experiment a complete success.

With two questions the two people who I see every day who cannot figure out how to make a large black coffee solved a long running international crisis that countries can’t even solve. The two biggest dimwits I have ever met figured it out in less time than they can figure out how to pour black coffee into a cup, and give it to me.

Bravo coffee shop people, bravo.

This Kittens is the HMS Ocean. You will notice that it is rather large, fairly tough looking. It has many weapons on board that would make your day incredibly inconvenient of they were suddenly aimed and fired at you and it is filled with personal who know how to use them, and are very very good at making a very large and smoldering mess.

In short Kittens, if the people on HMS Ocean decided that they didn’t like you or your country, you would know it. In a hurry.

These people my Kittens are Somalian pirates. You will notice that they have a boat. It was probably used for catching small quantities of fish once upon a time. They also have weapons although not nearly as many as the HMS Ocean, and unlike the Ocean, their weapons appear to have been purchased at a used car garage in exchange for a goat.

Sure they can also kill you, if they get close enough to you mostly with their breath and foot odor as well as possibly their guns. If they hit you with one. You know, just right.

You may also notice that these pirates would never be portrayed in a film by Johnny Depp, but probably Gary Coleman.

Finally, this is a yacht. It does not have any weapons or soldiers. It doesn’t even have a pop gun but it did cost more than a goat and less than the budget of an entire city. It does however have a few maps, several GPS devices and usually a few old people on board who can afford yachts who should probably know that paddling around Somalian waters deep in pirate territory is not a good idea.

In fact, it is such a bad idea that maybe….just maybe….any old people on yachts who are captured by Somalian pirates should probably stay held as captives. Forever.

Somalian pirates are always making the news and ….um…..waves. Along with a coulpe of old people they are also hanging onto several Spanish people as well as their boat. The Spanish government knows where they are and who is looking after them, but isn’t very interested in going to fetch them.

Pirates Threaten Spanish Captives

MADRID — Crew members of a Spanish fishing ship seized by Somali pirates over a month ago pleaded with their relatives on Thursday to press the Spanish government to do more to gain their release.

The relatives said that during telephone calls placed from the Alakrana — a 100-meter tuna-fishing vessel held off the Somali coast — captives briefly described their plight and said the pirates had followed through on their threat to start taking captives ashore. There are 16 Spaniards among a crew of 36.

Family members said the crew spoke while at gunpoint, adding that they could hear in the background the explosion of a grenade that had been lobbed at a Spanish Navy frigate and shots fired into the air. The Spanish defense minister, Carme Chacón, confirmed that a grenade had been thrown at the frigate but said that it had caused no damage or injuries. She said the pirates were using the relatives’ anguish to gain the upper hand.

On Friday, the pirates threatened to kill three crew members if two suspected pirates being held in Spain are not freed, the captain of the vessel, quoted by news agencies, said. “They have taken three of our crew and have given a deadline of two days,” Capt. Ricardo Blach told Spanish television by telephone from the Alakrana. “If in two days there are no signs that those two Somalis are being sent back here, they are going to kill them and immediately take another three hostages. This is a lottery,” he said, according to the reports.

The Alakrana was hijacked in international waters off Somalia on Oct. 2. The next day, Spanish Special Forces captured two of the pirates as they headed to shore in a small boat.

The pirates are demanding that Spain release those two, who have since been arraigned and await trial in Spain charged with 36 counts of kidnapping, with each carrying a penalty of as much as five years, as well as armed assault.

In the phone calls Thursday, crew members told their relatives that the pirates would hand over three colleagues taken ashore to the relatives of the two Somali men jailed in Spain. The three men have not been identified.

“My husband said we have to pressure the government because they have done this all wrong,” said Silvia Albés, 32, wife of Pablo Costas, 33, from her home in Gondomar. “The pirates are furious because they haven’t released the other two pirates here, and they’ve said they won’t negotiate until they do.”

Ms. Albés said in a telephone interview that had she spoken for two minutes with her husband. “They have no food and very little water left,” she said.

“Pablo is panicking. He’s terrorized. He wants to come home, and the government is not doing anything.”

Several other relatives of those being held strongly criticized the government through radio and television stations, accusing it of negligence, and even of blocking a negotiated solution.

Ms. Chacón, the defense minister, defended the government’s handling and said its priority was the well-being of the crew. She also said officials knew exactly where the three sailors were being held. Two Spanish Navy frigates are monitoring the Alakrana from a distance.

Crew members on the Alakrana are being held separately, said Juan Vieites, who is president of Euroatun, the umbrella group representing the European tuna industry, and who has been in close contact with the government, negotiators and relatives of the kidnapped crew.

Mr. Vieites also criticized the government’s actions. “They should have given us military protection onboard, like the French do,” he said. “They should have never brought the pirates to Spain and treated them like Guantánamo terrorists. They should have put more of an effort in negotiation. But now, it is a lot more complicated.”

That Kittens is the French military protection. They decided to fight the pirates by sending some French people out onto the ocean in some rubber boats to combat the naughty pirates in fishing boats.

This is how the world fights pirates who make millions of dollars and interrupt not only old people on yachts who don’t understand that paddling around in pirate turf is a bad idea, but also international shipping lanes. French people in rubber dingies and paying ransoms to men with shop class zip guns in fishing canoes.

Just in case you were under the impression that Somalia had recently joined the G8 and were now a super power, they are not. They have only had a sort of ind of government for a couple of years and aren’t exactly known for their manners. This is nothing against the people from of currently living there, it is just a fact based account of their history.

In keeping with basic history and if you were wondering if Somalia, and it’s pirates are a true massive military force to be reckoned with, here is some more history for you Kittens.

Piracy off the Somali coast has been a threat to international shipping since the beginning of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s. Since 2005, many international organizations, including the International Maritime Organization and the World Food Programme, have expressed concern over the rise in acts of piracy. Piracy has contributed to an increase in shipping costs and impeded the delivery of food aid shipments. Ninety percent of the World Food Programme’s shipments arrive by sea, and ships have required a military escort. According to the Kenyan foreign minister, Somali pirates have received over US$150 million during the 12 months prior to November 2008.

Clashes have been reported between Somalia’s Islamist fighters (who are opposed to the Transitional Federal Government) and the pirates. In August 2008, Combined Task Force 150, a multinational coalition task force, took on the role of fighting Somali piracy by establishing a Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) within the Gulf of Aden. The increasing threat posed by piracy also caused significant concerns in India since most of its shipping trade routes pass through the Gulf of Aden. The Indian Navy responded to these concerns by deploying a warship in the region on October 23, 2008. In September 2008, Russia announced that it too will soon join international efforts to combat piracy.

On October 6, 2008, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1838 calling on nations with vessels in the area to apply military force to repress the acts of piracy. At the 101st council of the International Maritime Organization, India called for a United Nations peacekeeping force under unified command to tackle piracy off Somalia. (There has been a general and complete arms embargo against Somalia since 1992.)

In November 2008, Somali pirates began hijacking ships well outside the Gulf of Aden, perhaps targeting ships headed for the port of Mombasa, Kenya. The frequency and sophistication of the attacks also increased around this time, as did the size of vessels being targeted. Large cargo ships, oil and chemical tankers on international voyages became the new targets of choice for the Somali hijackers. This is in stark contrast to the pirate attacks which were once frequent in the Straits of Malacca, another strategically important waterway for international trade, which were according to maritime security expert Catherine Zara Raymond, generally directed against “smaller , more vulnerable vessels carrying trade across the Straits or employed in the coastal trade on either side of the Straits.”

There are discussions under way to begin an aggressive covert operation against the pirates. The Central Intelligence Agency has been publicly warning of this potential threat for months. In a Harpers Magazine article, a CIA official stated, “We need to deal with this problem from the beach side, in concert with the ocean side, but we don’t have an embassy in Somalia and limited, ineffective intelligence operations. We need to work in Somalia and in Lebanon, where a lot of the ransom money has changed hands. But our operations in Lebanon are a joke, and we have no presence at all in Somalia.”

So a country that isn’t really a country who has pirates that aren’t really pirates in that they are actually a force to be feared are making sure that every time you have to buy some sneakers they cost more because of increased shipping costs.

They are also making sure that if you know somebody who is on one of those ships and it is taken over by people with pretend guns, that your country won’t just go get them for you and they for damned sure won’t just bother to kill or even make any pirates go away.

Is it possible my Kittens, as the two incredibly inept, retarded and bizarrely intuitive coffee shop workers so rightfully pointed out whilst trying to figure out what a black coffee is for the 367th day were right that maybe our countries should actually go and do something about this? Are they actually capable of having more common sense than all of our countries combined? Do they understand the simple fact that G8 nations and our slightly less G8ish friends, the G20 have enough resources to just simply go for a nice boat ride and rid the world of pirates? You know, so we can not have to read about pirates anymore?

As my experiment concluded, yes. Two coffee shop workers have more common sense and balls than all of them.

Nobody likes a bully or a retarded bully even more so. This is why America doesn’t have many fans. It is one thing to say to the world that you are going to fight another pointless war in a country that doesn’t really have anything to do with you because they have some things you want. It is also quite another to piss off so many people while you do this that folks within your own military get a bit shooty shooty killy killy about it. It is entirely another thing for every single country whether they are involved in a pointless war or not to not be bothered to just send a big heavily armed vessel into pirate waters and fucking sink their fishing boats.

It is also a bit of a mystery how countries also used to manage to invest in massive projects like the Panama canal so that global shipping would be easier and cheaper cannot even give old people a pamphlet on why sailing to Somalia is a bad idea. Granted it is a bit of a Darwinian win that anyone would need to bother to do this, but at the very least you would think it might come up in general travel advisory conversation. You know kind of like…hmm….oh I dunno….an America orange alert that they used to have all of the time when their last President was down in the polls.

This isn’t really anything for or against pirates Kittens. Frankly, I am on their side. If a few guys in an old beaten up canoe with some rusty old guns can scare the world into submission and make a few bucks, then I am for it. At the very least it is a nice reminder of what gigantic pussies the world has become that it won’t even bother to go shoot some pirates anymore.

It is also a nice reminder that although the people who foolishly sailed into pirate waters were fairly retarded in their action, that their governments don’t care enough about them to go and take them away from some men who live on a beach in tents.

During the 70’s there was the Iranian hostage crisis. This was a big deal because nobody wanted to fuck with Iran for good reason. Sure they would have won, but it would have costs many lives and a shitload of money. The Americans worked it to free the hostages and finally they were freed.

Spain and Britian aren’t even interested in fighting a few guys with goat breath to free their own people. They did however chose to fight in Iraq for…umm….what was that thing about again?

Oh yeah. Thankfully at least they are protecting us from H1N1. Oh….

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The Five Second Rule

“Morning”

“Morning”

“What can I get you?”

“One large black coffee please.”

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Oh for fuc….no. No milk. No sugar. One large black coffee. Just like yesterday, Just like tomorrow. Just like every day for the last year at this time every morning. One large black coffee.”

“So just black?”

“I hate you.”

“What else?”

“Oh for fuc….nothing. Just my daily large black coffee. Please.”

“Thank you, see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, and I will order a large black coffee then as well.”

“With what in it?”

“Please die.”

Every day Kittens. Every fucking day the coffee lady at the shop and I do the same dance. Every day, five days a week for the last year. It is the easiest recipe ever invented aside from room temperature water. Black coffee. No milk, no sugar. No cinnamon, no sprinkles, no soy vanilla infusion, no dollop of ice cream and no other annoying retarded Starbucks flavours. Just strong black coffee.

Just try getting one.

I know I have mentioned my coffee horrors before but it bears repeating Kittens because it is a daily reminder of just how stupid people can be, not just once or even twice but every day. Forever.

We all witness these people too Kittens. Every single mind numbing day we all see the same people committing the same common sense atrocities and we never reach into the inside pocket of our jacket, produce a large monkey wrench, and smash them in the face until they lie there bleeding and crying “why, why why have you destroyed me?”

Every day I see the same people, running for the streetcar that is at their stop every day at the same time trying to get on it and then get to work. Every day the same people then stand there for ten minutes confused and fumbling through pockets and purses trying to find the same amount of money that they spend every day yet never leave the house without having previously set aside for the morning commute. I’m sure if I chose to kill myself with fast food I would also see the same people n line at Mc Donalds every day looking up at the menu board with the same confused look while they pondered what they should have that day, as if suddenly the Hamburgler might be offering a chef’s special.

You also see the same people in line on front of you whenever you go to the drug store who are buying a yeast infection cream and insist on giving the cashier every imaginable point redeeming bonus club card, and then paying for their purchase without somehow remembering their pin number or even how to use the debit card keypad. Again.

Now Kittens I know that you are saying to yourself “Oh come on. Nobody is that retarded. Don’t wild dogs attack and kill these people before they infect the rest of society?”

Nope. In today’s Toronto Star…….

Cocoa Krispies won’t save you from H1N1

As H1N1 hysteria grows, some people are trying everything from onions to homeopathy to fend off the vicious bug.

“I’m hearing a lot of people talking about H1N1 and there’s a lot of fear out there, that’s for sure,” says Heather Boon, a professor at the University of Toronto who studies natural health products.

A host of H1N1 prevention techniques and products are circulating on Internet websites and email chains. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been vigilant, sending cease-and-desist letters to companies marketing “fraudulent products” in relation to H1N1, including gels, inhalers, masks, body wash and “air system products.”

Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital, says she thinks a lot of people are “out to make money out of swine flu.”

Novalis Integra Center for Healing and Transformation, an Ottawa-based company, was offering “free swine flu natural immunization” on its website until it was tracked down by the FDA. Co-founder Joyce Friesen says the immunization product is a powder you put under your tongue – an “energetic imprint” of the H1N1 virus created with a “homeopathic resonance system.”

Novalis, which received warning letters from the FDA and the Competition Bureau of Canada, is no longer marketing the product on its website.

“It’s really unfortunate because homeopathy works and it’s a safe and inexpensive alternative and it wouldn’t cost the government billions of dollars,” Friesen says.

When it comes to homeopathy, McGeer says there are two kinds of people: those who honestly believe their medicine will help, and scammers.

“There’s any number of homeopathic remedies and vitamins and herbs … and a whole list of things that people are trying,” she says. But the only things proven to fight H1N1, she says, are vaccination and washing your hands.

ONIONS
Parishioners from Toronto’s Dewi Sant Welsh United Church are placing onions in bowls around their houses.

Their church newsletter circulated a story about a farmer who did this during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919, using the onions to absorb the virus and keep his family healthy.

Church volunteer Nina Morris hasn’t put out her onions yet, but plans to.

“I’ve heard both ways – you can use it peeled or unpeeled – but I think unpeeled would be a little bit onerous,” says the 62-year-old.

Mount Sinai’s Allison McGeer has only one thing to say about using onions: “Nonsense.”

That’s right Kittens, people have actually gotten themselves whipped up into such a frenzy over swine flu that they think Count Chocula might protect them in case Captain Crunch turns out to be a Somalian pirate.

To make things even more entertaining, the usual fear mongering media who’s job it is to tell us what Jon and Kate are doing to each other today as well as making sure that the masses are convinced that they are all going to die from swine flu now have to tell the people that they are scaring to death that Cocoa Krispies are in fact, not a cure for anything except the munchies from a bong hit.

It isn’t entirely the fault of the media though says the media. They are only doing a public service because it is really the fault of the people who make food that has cartoon elves as their corporate representatives. It is because of the evil illusions created by the dastardly elf cabal that is to blame. Thankfully the people who are prepared to believe that Fruit Loops can cure swine flu far better than that wacky old wives tale of washing your hands after you get somebodies snot all over them on the subway and then maybe not go home and rub the dummy out of their eyes.

You see my Kittens when you set aside the Hollywood mass hysteria about swine flu, and the ratings that the media is enjoy scaring the snot out of you (literally), and the fact that one of the largest newspapers in one of the highest rated countries in the world according to the UN has to actually tell their readers in the health section that magical elves on a cereal box cannot cure swine flu, cancer, small pox or even pick a winning horse then you start to realize that the true disease that is killing us, is uncommon sense.

When we drop food on the floor we call it the 5 second rule. if we grab it before 5 seconds elapses we figure that somehow the dog shit that was on our shoes and now on our floor somehow didn’t get all over our chicken and waffles, despite the dog shit smear that looks a bit like Jesus all over it.

With common sense on the ropes and gasping for air as if the media and society somehow developed a vaccine for it, I suggest we apply the 5 second rule to everything.

Every day while taking a streetcar to work I time myself getting on and off of it. Three steps to the streetcar, three steps to the road. It takes me exactly 2 and 1/2 seconds.

If a person cannot manage to lug their vast abominable hulking frame and buggies of shopping on and off of a streetcar in 5 seconds, then they should not be allowed to ride with the rest of us. 5 seconds for 3 steps isn’t much to ask, and this is coming from a man with arthritis. The same thing follows with finding enough money for your commute or even finding a place to sit or stand.

It takes me far longer than 5 seconds to order a black coffee everyday from the same people who I order a black coffee from every day. It takes at least 15 seconds to tell them to make me a large black coffee, because they always ask me how much milk or sugar I would like in my daily large black coffee. It then takes at least another 15 seconds for them to grasp the concept of black coffee in a world that doesn’t know what black coffee is anymore because coffee isn’t coffee unless it has a flavour shot of blueberry razzle dazzle whipped cream, a few sparklers and is prepared by somebody who doesn’t work at a coffee shop anymore but is now called a Barrista. This has made black coffee much like common sense. The simplest easiest recipe almost virtually extinct, and replaced by something, expensive, retarded and has a corporate cartoon spokes…umm….thing.

If we have to sit the average citizen down and explain to them that animated cereal box goblins will not protect them from a case of swine flu just because the cartoon goblins say it will, or might…possibly…and it takes more than 5 seconds for them to understand this, then they deserve swine flu delivered to them anally by an actual swine.

Start applying the 5 second rule to everything and every easy to understand and common sense conversation, rule or generally accepted part of life Kittens for a week and watch what happens.

Give the next person in front of you exactly 5 seconds to order lunch at Mc Donalds. You now, the place where you only have a few options that everybody on earth kows what is on the menu regardless of whether they eat there or not. Wait…then wait some more….and then wait a bit longer.

Now go to a store and give the person in front of you 5 seconds to remember how to operate their very own back card. Once you have completed that failed experiment follow somebody to a magazine rack and wait 5 seconds for them to read the headline on a magazine that claims that Jennifer Aniston has had a vagina transplant so she can get Brad back, and wait for them to figure out that maybe the story is pure bullshit.

Now that you have completed these relatively easy tasks, do two ore things my Kittens.

Go up to a stranger on the street and tell them how a cartoon garden gnome will keep them safe from swine flu, and wait 5 seconds for a response.

Then, once you have done that, go order yourself a large black coffee somewhere and start counting 5-4-3-2-……………………..

“Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.”

~ Josh Billings

Thanks to my life’s inspiration Kelly for the quote, the topic and as always the love.

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Shake Your Baby Maker

Happy Monday Kittens!!!

Did we all have a lovely weekend? Enjoy a nice relaxing few days? Did we set out clocks back like good little obedient workers? Yeah me neither.

It isn’t that I didn’t want to change my clocks, or didn’t bother as some form of protest but just like everything else in our modern world it was done for me.

Now before you ask, no I didn’t purchase myself a human to do it for me. It was already taken care of by technology. The Sunday morning ritual that comes every year of waking up, pouring a strong black coffee and setting my clocks back one hour has been robbed from me by technology just like it has taken every other mundane joy from me. The television converter had been changed while I slept. So was the clock on my trusty laptop, cell phone and aside from my internal clock itself, it was as if a bi-yearly event never even happened.

Technology is supposed to exist to advance humankind. It is supposed to serve us, it’s master and make our lives slightly easier, a bit less complicated and hopefully not send homicidal robots from the future to slay our unborn children so that they do not one day lead a rebellion to rise up against the machines.

Generally us folks think this is a good thing. Most people shove iPod into their vacant heads every day so they aren’t forced to listen to people have actual conversations anymore and if they do require conversation, then they can always text somebody. This is great until somebody finally comes up with a new contraption so we can avoid all human contact altogether so we never have to actually make eye contact with each other and we can just sit back, plug in and enjoy a Disney lifetime “experience” from the comfort of our La-Z-Boys.

Well good news Kittens. Thankfully our prayers have finally been at least partially answered and we can scratch one of life’s more annoying (which for many is also just a bi-yearly event) and icky chores thanks to technology. We can FINALLY stop having sex!!!!

No men OR women needed: Scientists create sperm and eggs from stem cells

Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood.

It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own.

But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies

Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place to tackle infertility risk distorting and damaging relations between family members.

The U.S. government-funded research also offers the prospect of a ‘miracle pill’ which staves off the menopause, allowing women to wait longer to have a child.

It centres on stem cells, widely seen as a repair kit for the body.
Scientists at Stanford University in California found the right cocktail of chemicals and vitamins to coax the cells into becoming eggs and sperm

The sperm had heads and short tails and are thought to have been mature enough to fertilise an egg.

The eggs were at a much earlier stage but were still much more developed than any created so far by other scientists.

The double success, published in the journal Nature, raises the prospect of men and women one day ‘growing’ their own sperm and eggs for use in IVF treatments.

The American team used stem cells taken from embryos in the first days of life but
hope to repeat the process with slivers of skin.

The skin cells would first be exposed to a mixture which wound back their biological clocks to embryonic stem cell state, before being transformed into sperm or eggs.

Starting with a person’s own skin would also mean the lab-grown sperm or eggs would not be rejected by the body.

The science also raises the possibility of ‘male eggs’ made from men’s skin and ‘female sperm’ from women’s skin.

This would allow gay couples to have children genetically their own, although many scientists are sceptical about whether it is possible to create sperm from female cells, which lack the male Y chromosome.

The U.S. breakthrough could unlock many of the secrets of egg and sperm production, leading to new drug treatments for infertility.

Defects in sperm and egg development are the biggest cause of infertility but, because many of the key stages occur in the womb, scientists have struggled to study the process in detail.

Researcher Rita Reijo Pera, of Stanford’s Centre for Human Embryonic Stem Cell
Research, believes new fertility drugs are just five years away.

However, safety and ethical concerns mean that artificial sperm and eggs are much further away from use.

Dr Reijo Pera said any future use of artificial eggs and sperm would have to be subject to guidelines.

‘Whether one builds the boundaries on religion or just on an internal sense or of right and wrong, these are important. In this field, it is not “anything goes”.’

Scientists at Newcastle University claimed to have made sperm from embryonic stem cells earlier this year but the research paper has been retracted.

Dr Allan Pacey, a Sheffield University expert in male fertility said: ‘Ultimately this may help us find a cure for male infertility. Not necessarily by making sperm in the laboratory, I personally think that is unlikely, but by identifying new targets for drugs or genes that may stimulate sperm production to occur naturally.

‘This is a long way off, but it is a laudable dream.’

Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said that IVF should be the preserve of married couples.

‘The question is, why are we creating artificial gametes (eggs and sperm) and aborting 200,000 babies a year when there are many, many couples willing to adopt?’

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, warned that any flaws in the artificial sperm or eggs could be passed on to future generations.

Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: ‘The use of artificial gametes in reproduction would distort and damage relations between family members.

‘There are no instances of any major medical advance achieved by abandoning basic ethical principles such as safeguarding the right to life.’

Isn’t that great news Kittens?

All of that boring, sweaty naked sticky sex is going to be a thing of the past!! The best part is, is that we will no longer have to suffer through a life of imperfect humans and even more reassuring that this is a truly magnificent breakthrough, it was made possible by the fine wonderful folks at the United States Government. What could possibly go wrong?

Kittens I have to admit, I am truly overjoyed by this news. I thought that meddling with mother nature had reached it’s entertainment zenith with Jon and Kate and all eight of their very exploited children that they show on television for our amusement. It’s a truly wonderful testament to our humanity to not be satisfied with having a few children in a world where so many are sitting around in orphanages needing good homes, that you can trot out to a fertility clinic and have a few more squirted into your mimsey. It’s also wonderful that some people who are so inclined can have a child or ten far past the years that their body allows pregnancy to take place so that they can enjoy the joy of child birth, and then die shortly after leaving them motherless in the world like Carmen Bousada did.

Naturally with any scientific breakthrough we should probably start preparing ourselves for a few broken eggs….you know, in the name of science. There will probably be a few experiments that don’t quite work out the way we had hoped, so chances are that there will be a few early results that will have to be discarded after completion, but hey, that’s just how science works Kittens. You can’t expect success on the first try. You have to break a few fake eggs before you make a perfect baby gravy omelet.

The scientists will need to have the perfect tools…….

…….and they will have to practice a hell of a lot to find the ideal conditions and delivery system……

……..until finally they successfully are able to re-create nature as it was obviously intended. You know, unnaturally as humanly possible.

Then after a few failed attempts we can all finally enjoy what we have all been hoping for ever since we first were told that we wanted babies, we can finally order ourselves the perfect child free of any flaws and perfectly modified to be as wonderful and free of any harmful or annoying human characteristics at all. Our own little bundle of human engineered joy. Whoooop-de-fucking-doo!!!

Now Kittens as I have taught you well I expect that a few of you may be a wee bit cynical about this latest breakthrough. Yes I understand your fears, nightmares and inevitable sleepless nights that will find you waking up under your bed sweating in the fetal position while you contemplate the idea of the US government growing Chia Kids.

One of the best bits about growing our own kids is that those kids will one day get to grow even better kids than we did…and so on and so on. Thankfully this will breed out some of the more endearing qualities of humanity that we are currently forced to continue to deal with like cancer, eye colour and that ridiculous horrible human trait that I personally hate so very much…..growing old with somebody you love.

I just wish I could leap forward into the vast wonderful future of us ordering children made to order courtesy of the US government so that generations from now, our grandchildren will remember us for who we are now and carry on our magnificent legacies.

(Dad)

(Mom)

Hmmmmmmmmm……….on second thought, I can think of another scientific method that may be a bit old fashioned, but has worked out rather well so far. It doesn’t have any fancy machines or isn’t the fodder for futuristic armies of proto-perfect-Germanic-wunderkind, but it kinda cool and the soundtrack goes well with a good cuddle from your good lady Missus and an bottle of wine.

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May The Farce Be With You

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good news Kittens, I have a good one for you today. Perhaps you have even heard about this story. Apparently it is rather popular amongst the people who tend to believe in this sort of thing. Today Kittens we are going to talk about This Guy.

HISTORY

In January 2006 in New York, the patient of a well-known psychiatrist draws the face of a man that has been repeatedly appearing in her dreams. In more than one occasion that man has given her advice on her private life. The woman swears she has never met the man in her life.

That portrait lies forgotten on the psychiatrist’s desk for a few days until one day another patient recognizes that face and says that the man has often visited him in his dreams. He also claims he has never seen that man in his waking life.

The psychiatrist decides to send the portrait to some of his colleagues that have patients with recurrent dreams. Within a few months, four patients recognize the man as a frequent presence in their own dreams. All the patients refer to him as THIS MAN.

From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moskow etc.

At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams.

That’s right my Kittens. People from all over the globe are claiming that they have all had dreams about the very same….ummmm……generic looking white guy. You know, some guy that really has no distinguishing features or traits. Just some average cracker ass cracker that you see everyday in shops, going to work, out at lunch, living down the street and driving the bus. An average everyday honky. This is big fucking news.

Now I know what you are thinking Kittens. You must be saying to yourself “hang on a second fucker….what if there is something to this. I think maybe possibly somehow when I was unconscious and sleeping if a gigantic bender maybe I have had a dream about this guy as well. I know I have seen him before….somewhere….I think…”

Yes Kittens you may have indeed. Allow me to burst this bubble for you and explain it all away so you can go to sleep tonight and not worry about the man in your dreams.

There you have it. Mystery solved. He isn’t a mystery man at all. The person that all of these people have been dreaming about is in fact 70’s easy rock legend…Neil Sedaka. You may now breathe a sigh of relief and go fetch one of his records and listen the nightmares away.

Don’t feel sad or cheated Kittens. This isn’t the first case of mistaken identity on a global scale by people who tend to believe in goofy things.

See what I mean? This kind of thing happens all of the time.

So what’s the deal with people who believe in This Man? Here’s what they have to say.

THEORIES

Several theories have been developed to explain the mysteriously recurring presence of this man in the dreams of different people who are not related in any way. The following theories are the ones that elicit the greatest interest among the dreamers themselves.

ARCHETYPE THEORY
According to Jung’s psychoanalytic theory, this man is an archetypal image belonging to the collective unconscious that can surface in times of hardship (emotional development, dramatic changes in our lives, stressful circumstances etc.) in particularly sensitive subjects.

RELIGIOUS THEORY
According to this theory this man is the image of the Creator, that is to say one of the forms in which God manifests himself today. This is the reason why his indications and the words he utters during the dreams should be decidedly followed by the dreamers.

DREAM SURFER THEORY
It is the most interesting theory and the one that has the greatest implications, but it has also the lowest scientific credibility. According to this theory this man is a real person, who can enter people’s dreams by means of specific psychological skills. Some believe that in real life this man looks like the man in the dreams. Others think that the man in the dreams looks completely different from his real life counterpart. Some people seem to believe that behind this man there is a mental conditioning plan developed by a major corporation.

DREAM IMITATION THEORY
This is a scientific psycho-sociological theory which claims that this phenomenon has arisen casually and has progressively developed by imitation. Basically when people are exposed to this phenomenon they become so deeply impressed that they start seeing this man in their dreams.

DAYTIME RECOGNITION THEORY
This theory states that the apparitions of this man are purely casual. Normally we do not remember precisely the faces we see in our dreams. The image of this man would thus be an instrument which, in the subject’s waking life, facilitates recognition of an undefined oneirical image.

(No seriously…it’s really only Neil Sedaka…get over it)

What the fuck is it with people who keep seeing the creator every lately? Who is that bored? Life is busy and filled with actual weird stuff. You know, losing footie teams, relationships, paying bills, going to work, trying not to throw yourself into a pit and embrace the sweet calming hug of death eternal. You know Kittens, real stuff.

In case you haven’t been reading the papers lately, let me bring you up to speed Kittens. It seems that the Creator has been showing up quite a bit lately. He didn’t get himself an infomercial or anything, or isn’t booked as the half time entertainment during the Superbowl. In typical Creator fashion he is doing things slightly more subtle. You know, rather unlike all of those biblical passages where he tends to make a big entrance and his feelings about places like Sodom fairly well known.

In one part of the world god has decided to carve his words into a young boy, you know….to show his love.

Koran boy’s skin mystery

A BABY boy has left doctors baffled after passages from the Koran were found on his skin.
The parents of nine-month-old Ali Yakubov were stunned when the word Allah appeared on his chin soon after his birth.

Since then scores of writings in Arabic script have emerged on his back, arms, legs and stomach.

Amazingly his family claim the old markings vanish before the new words arrive — twice a week.

Medics say they cannot explain his mysterious condition — but deny that the marks are from someone writing on the child’s skin.

His mother, Madina, said that she and her husband were not religious until the words started appearing on his skin.

Initially they did not show anyone the unexplained scribbles, but eventually revealed them to their doctor.

Now the boy has become a focus of Muslim homage in his troubled home province of Dagestan, close to war-ravaged Chechnya in the south of Russia.

Local MP Akhmedpasha Amiralaev said: “This boy is a pure sign of God. Allah sent him to Dagestan in order to stop revolts and tension in our republic.”

The tot’s mother said: “Normally those signs appear twice a week – on Mondays and on the nights between Thursdays and Fridays.

“Ali always feels bad when it is happening. He cries and his temperature goes up.

“It’s impossible to hold him when it’s happening, his body is actively moving, so we put him into his cradle. It’s so hard to watch him suffering.”

(Yup, it’s real Kittens)

Humpf. Go figure. In a part of the world where human life isn’t exactly cherished unless it is making somebody else some money (for those of you who have seen Slumdog Millionaire, I need not explain further), a poor kid is suffering because he keeps getting marked up with the words of god, and it hurts him when it happens. You know, when nobody except the parents are around.

People are flocking to see scar-boy and undoubtedly paying to see the words of god.

What a fucking world we still live in.

Fret not though Kittens. There are more. Neil Sedaka and Allah aren’t the only gods that are showing up lately. The other guy Jesus is at it again giving shout outs to his flock in a typically Jesusy sort of way but unlike Allah who thinks roasting a kid alive is fun, or Neil Sedaka who is content just freaking out people who need the help of a shrink Jesus has a sense of humor as well and just like you, shops at Ikea, and also needs to take a piss.

‘Jesus’s face’ spotted on the toilet door in Ikea Glasgow

The face of Jesus has been spotted in a toilet door in a Glasgow branch of Ikea.

A bearded face, with long flowing hair, is plainly visible on the wooden door of the men’s toilet in the Braehead outlet of the Swedish furniture and meatballs giant.

There is some debate over whether the face truly represents the Son of Man, or whether it is in fact Gandalf out of the Lord of the Rings, or even a member of ABBA.

One shopper said: “It takes you by surprise. It is really clear in the wood.

“I was only heading to the toilet and found God.

“My wife thought He looked like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings but it is definitely more like the Turin Shroud.

“It’s certainly not what you expect to find in an Ikea store. Mind you, you need a little divine intervention to get out of here sometimes.”

In a further twist, Ikea bosses claim that the image is really Benny Anderson, of the Eurovision Song Contest-winning Swedish 1970s Europop outfit ABBA.

A spokeswoman said: “Swedishness is engrained in every part of our stores.”

If the image is agreed to be Jesus, rather than a fictional wizard or a bearded, middle-aged pop singer, it may be the oddest place for a vision of the Saviour since a Welsh woman spotted His face in the lid of a jar of Marmite during breakfast in May this year.

There you have it Kittens. Jesus is just like Rev Ted Haggard. he likes hanging around the toilet of public places hoping he might get a little hot lord-on-disciple action and get to stroke himself some nice pulsing hard flock. Unlike Allah and Neil Sedaka Jesus must be out plugging a new movie or just reminding everyone that his birthday is coming up and trying to tell the world that he doesn’t need anymore ties or piano lesson vouchers. He has been showing up everywhere you would expect the son of god to be. Just like the news story reported he has shown up on a jar lid of Marmite.

(Yup, this is real too Kittens)

He’s also shown up in a meteor found in Russia.

A tree

In a dirty shower as mould.

There is also my deep personal favorite for reasons that are all too obvious…….Jesus is on Oprah…

(Yup, they are all real)

So Kittens, how many of you think that Jesus is hanging out inside a jar of Marmite? How many of you think that Jesus has nothing better to do than scrawl himself all over an Ikea toilet door and how many of you think that if Jesus, Neil Sedaka or Allah actually existed that they would make their omnipotent presence know by sneaking their images into peoples Xanaxed out sleeping heads, onto a kid too young to defend himself or hiding on the set of Oprah?

If you were the type of person who believes in the fairy tales written in some dusty old books then you will remember that these folks weren’t exactly wallflowers. They were showmen and didn’t exactly go down in history for being modest. Proclaiming yourself as the son of god and king of the Jews isn’t what you typically think of as being humble. You would tend to believe that if they at the very least followed some of their previous examples of letting people know that they were still around crashing the party, they would make a bit of an entrance.

(David Lee Roth…Jewish and knows how to make an entrance, and also has about as many fans as Jesus)

(Paul Stanley…ditto)

(Chewbacca….not sure if he was Jewish or not, but sure knew how to make an entrance, and was a hairy as Jesus)

Maybe it was Chewbacca on all of those things. He’s hairy, has lots of fans and people all over the world know about his story. It’s just as plausible as Jesus and Neil Sedaka isn’t it Kittens?

Maybe Chewbacca is on Oprah and Neil Sedaka haunts you while you sleep. Yes? No?

Are any of those explanations any less goofy than the other ones that people believe?

At the very least people have actual proof of Chewbacca and Neil Sedaka so it is critically far more logical and critical that it is possible. What would make the other stories more believable than the ones I present as a possibility? Mine line up as at least a decent scientific explanation, and yet I doubt many people would believe them.

It is because of human conditioning, that is why.

Society is and will remain willingly obedient Pavlovian conditioned servants who would happily believe that Jesus is chilling out for all of the world to see on the insole of their workboot, and that some average white guy who they dreamt about while heavily medicated is the Creator…..saying nothing about why eye witnesses make for lousy testimony in courts.

An obedient society that believes in men in the sky, average looking white guys in dreams or Chewbacca showing up in the toilet bowl is exactly how it was meant to be because distracted masses who are afraid of their own shadow don’t tend to question the larger pictures very much.

We’ve all wondered (sometime aloud) “How the fuck does this person do it? They’re fucking retarded!! They have everything and they can barely tie their shoes without instructions.”

It’s simple Kittens, society is built to reward those people. The second you start thinking critically about your life, environment and path in life, it hits you like a sack of rusty bulldozer sprockets.

You are and will always be punished for thinking for yourself and asking the big questions. It is far better that you think Jesus buttered your pancake this morning than believe that the syrup just so happened to sort of looked like Chewbacca.

It’s way easier to believe that some god somewhere burned a kid, than believe that maybe his parents are just flat out evil fuckers or that some honky invades your mind while you sleep, rather than think that maybe secretly you kind of like Neil Sedaka.

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FAQ Checking

Okay my Kittens, let’s see how smart we are shall we? Who amongst us knows what The Spaghetti Incident is?

There is the overwhelming roar of “it’s a fucking Guns n Roses album you retard” that I expected.

Close Kittens. Yes of course you are partially correct. That is the name of a GnR album so you are not technically incorrect, but who here has heard of The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest?

No takers, I expected as much.

Well Kittens it’s like this. On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the “virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil.” The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the show’s highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, “For those who love this dish, there’s nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.”

You don’t believe me do you Kittens? Well as usual I have gone the extra mile and have found that very footage…..so open your wide little eyes and take a good look at what is considered to be the greatest news hoax ever committed.

There you have it Kittens, I wasn’t kidding. It was very real and people took the bait, hook line and sinker. It is now and always have been my water line of just how gullible the human mammal is and remains to be to this very day? So what happened after the show was broadcast? Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, “Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.”

The calls came in incessantly. Some were from viewers who had enjoyed the joke – including one from Bristol who complained that spaghetti didn’t grow vertically, it grew horizontally. But mainly the calls were requests for the BBC to settle family arguments: the husband knew it must be true that spaghetti grew on a bush because Richard Dimbleby had said so and the wife knew it was made with flour and water, but neither could convince the other.

Sure we can look back and laugh and say “ooooh those spazzy Brits, what the hell were they thinking? I mean everybody knows better than that and understands that spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees, it’s made by elves….or Italians or something.” The two are easily confused.

The thing is Kittens is in 1957 the British didn’t really know what spaghetti was. It was foreign and it wasn’t like today where we can have a taste of the world in a food court in a mall. It wasn’t an urban myth like Bigfoot or Jesus. People sort of knew what it was and a few had had some for dinner but not very many people actually knew where it came from, or if it was actually any good. Think of it as a bit like Coldplay. Even the people who claim to enjoy it can’t really tell you why, or even where it came from or why it is even here in the first place.

So what does a decades old media hoax have to do with today’s world which is filled with ultra smart informed fully wired HD highly educated smart phone iHumans? Simple. People are still falling for Swiss Spaghetti Harvests, but not once a year on April Fools day when your guard should be pegging in the red, but all day every day again thanks to the kind folks in the media.

This Kittens is something called the CNN “Magic Wall.” No shit. A global news station has a magic fucking wall, as if Anderson Cooper was fucking Prospero. As you can imagine the magic wall doesn’t actually perform any magic otherwise it would turn John Roberts into a real newsman again and not some talking head muppet. It’s actually a Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall made by New Yorks Perceptive Pixel, as if that really matters but I mention it just in case you really thought it was magic and thought I was kidding.

The one today bit of magic that the magic wall does perform however is it turns bullshit in to fact all day every day, and this isn’t just me being cynical either Kittens. That is no magic. Unlike what it and most other media outlets broadcast or write about, that is a hard cold fact.

The Pew Research Center for the People&the Press has reported that 63% of Americans believe news stories are often inaccurate, the worst report card it has ever seen. This means that 63% of the people who consume (and it is consumption) the daily news whether it is on television, the news papers or online feel that they are being cheated and are getting something other than what they ordered, and all they actually wanted were the facts.

Imagine going to your local pub or place to eat and 63% of the time you are given something other than what you ordered. Sure it may be close…kind of, but not what you wanted. Perhaps you got fries instead of salad with your burger 63% of the time or 63% of the time you didn’t get a Guinness but instead they bring you a Budweiser. Both are beer (yes I know…Guinness isn’t beer, it’s a stout but give me some elbow room to make a point) would you keep going back to either of those places? Most people can’t even continue to support a sports team that loses 63% of the time. Would you even stay with a spouse that was faithful to you 37% of the time but the other 63% was busy fucking the neighbor? I didn’t think so either.

(Oh Blitzer…..how could you? And with Anderson????? You whore!!!)

So what’s the deal with most of the American population thinking that most of what they see and read (the latter accounting for a very small portion of the American population) not believing what they are being told most of the time? The thirst to have the latest news handed to you right away without worrying about those pesky “facts.”

“Speed is always a threat to accuracy, and the faster we can go, the more jeopardy the truth is in,” said Deborah Potter, a former CBS News reporter and executive director of the News Lab think-tank .

In live broadcasts, anchors need to take care in emphasizing what is not known, said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now a professor at George Mason University.

“We’re not doing it enough,” he said, “because it’s too easy to seize on something that appears to be happening before our eyes and run with it.”

Social media seems to be increasing the opportunity for mischief. False reports that Britney Spears, George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum and Natalie Portman had died spread on Twitter and Facebook in recent months, compelling major news organizations to check them out. The latest unfounded death rumour, only this month, concerned Kanye West. There’s even a Web site devoted to creating fake news stories about celebrities.

Nowhere was the new landscape more vividly illustrated than this month when Nick Denton, chief of the irreverent Web site Gawker.com, issued a memo scolding his staff for a few cases “where we’ve thought WAY too much before publishing” a story.

Get something out fast with what we know, Denton wrote. We can always update.

“At some media organizations, you might get rapped for running a premature story,” he wrote. “At Gawker Media, you’ll lose way more points for being scooped on a story you had in your hands.”

Kittens I have to say I promised myself I would touch this one with a barge pole. I tried to drink the words away, I bashed my head on the corner of my stove for hours at a time and I even (shudder) watched THIS for 17 strait hours. However I am man enough to admit defeat when I must, and besides if anything truly illustrates a mind boggling hoax on the scale of the Swiss Spaghetti prank it is the Balloon Boy story.

As I am occasionally a man of mercy we won’t be going into why the family of that kid should be thrown into a large tank filled with ornery pirhanna. Or what terrifying whores they are who are in such desperate need to become the next Jon and Kate that they would exploit their 6 year old child for a shot at a reality show on TLC, the channel that used to be refereed to as The Learning Channel, we’re going to talk about how it was reported.

The idea of a 6 year old kid drifting away across Colorado was a big news story. The media jumped on it like a fat kid on cake. They followed the balloon all across the sky until it landed and when there was no kid inside, they looked everywhere for him thinking maybe he fell out. Nobody bothered to see if he was playing with his toy bulldozer somewhere and didn’t actually care about Dads balloon.

As we now know the family planned the hoax and they are hopefully going to receive the full measure of the law, and are hopefully shunned by society for life. At the very least the Dad should be made to serve as Nick Noltes personal assistant for the rest of his life.

For once we can’t really fault the end consumer for the Balloon Boy story. it was fairly gripping television for sure and in many ways you can’t really blame the media for jumping all over it. If we waited for all the facts to come in before the assassination of JFK was reported we’d still be waiting and Oliver Stone would have become a wipe down boy at a local peep show.

It was however vastly missing some skepticism and caution. In a rush to get the story to the world, nobody asked any hard questions.

Perhaps tinged by disgust at the hoax itself, the media has suffered a backlash among people who believe too much time was spent on the story, said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

A few days later in Washington, an official-looking press release from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced that the organization had reversed its position on climate change legislation.

Not so. It was an elaborate scam put on by members of the liberal activist group Yes Men, who were looking to draw attention to a policy stance with which it disagreed.

Reuters moved a story based on the false press release, and both CNBC and Fox Business Network reported it — with the anchors correcting themselves mid-story upon learning it was false.

In all the cases, a desire to push the story out fast took priority over a phone call to double-check.

“This is an example of how, when you get too careless and don’t really do your homework, there’s a price to pay,” said Eric Wohlschlegel, communications chief for the Chamber of Commerce, who broke into the Yes Men’s fake news conference to announce it was a hoax.

Mike Bonanno, a member of the Yes Men, said the group achieved its goal of spotlighting the policy. A day after its antics, a paper manufacturer in upstate New York resigned its membership in the chamber over the policy.

The frightening message: Hoaxes work.

As we all know, us human mammals tend to believe something if it written down or told to us by somebody we trust. We also know that we are easily distracted by flashing lights and pretty colours and for gaddamned sure if we are given too much information to process all at once then we become baffled and can only absorb bits of half truths here and there with very Little retention. If you take all of those thing and combine them while referring to them as “news” and by “news” we still naively like to think of it as fact then you have a perfect storm for misinformation.

This is a great example. Every city has one of these channels. A local cable 24 hr news channel that brings you live up to the minute news all at once from traffic, to current affairs to stock indexes to who was wearing what at last nights Blow Me awards.

Since we’ve all seen these (this channel is always on in our office and months later, I still have no idea what it says) then you probably haven’t broken down the fact that at any given time there are 8 separate screens going. At any time you have to weed through 8 different sources of information passing by in the blink of an eye that don’t really tell you all that much.

As we are all at least reasonably interested in the world at least a little bit (and only because we are forced to live in it until other options become possible) we tend to have a small passing interest in what is going on. If nothing else it gives us something to talk about and it gives even fewer of us a chance to look like smarty pants if we know something that bastard neighbor Johnson doesn’t know….fuck I hate Johnson.

With 63% of Americans accepting that their daily news landfill is at least a bit wrong, or at least bullshit I have to say my dear Kittens I am cautiously optimistic. At the very least they are questioning what they are being told, or finally understand that they aren’t getting the whole entire story and thus the actual truth.

It’s no great mystery that ever since mankind began swinging bats at each other that we have always wondered who controls our world, why it does what it does what it does and when if ever it is going to end.

Plenty of Kool Aid has been guzzled by people who believe who claim to know the answers to this question and there is certainly a large amount of blame to be placed on the people who claim to have the answers, I usually blame the people who ask them the questions in the first place while simultaneously opening their wallets.

The man with the answers always disappears with the days take before the world ends and the followers at best are left on top of a hill in the drizzle looking confused, or at worst, rather quite dead.

The same up to the minute fast as fast can get magic wall of mysteries and stories about kids in balloons and Yes Men scams plague our planet by people who claim to have the answers to the questions that we think we should be asking, but we didn’t even realize that we should be asking them until somebody told us we should.

(To this day, the funniest thing I have ever seen. Done by my good mate Simon E. Apt. 508 College St Toronto Canada n the eve of Italy vs. Brazil in the World Cup final)

Rather than presume something that is fed to us is true, or at least partially true our society has decided to take what we are given as if it was passed to us through a drive thu window and only when we get home and unwrap it and discover that 63% they fucked up our order but it’s too far to go back and bitch them out, we just settle and gobble it up. It’s too much work and it’s KIND of like what we asked for. The law of diminished returns. Not only that just like the drive thru or the magic wall we don’t really care who is giving it to us anymore, as long as what they have to say gives us something to look smarter than that smug prick Johnson the neighbor about then we really don’t care.

Would it have made a better story of there was a dog in the balloon? Or what if the kid was really in there and died? How about if the balloon wasn’t a balloon but a sleeper cell and it held a dirty bomb and we all got to watch a live action terrorist attack instead?

What would have happened if in the middle of it a trap door opened and a large banner unfolded a huge “Vote For Quimby” appeared?

Maybe we don’t need up to the minute. Maybe we need to think and talk a bit more to debate and be a bit more skeptical and thoughtful. Maybe we should even do it over a nice plate of spaghetti. Spring will be here in a few months in Switzerland so we can enjoy a nice fresh crop next year.

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Ice Skating Bear Kills Trainer….Look Surprised!

Woooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello Kittens. Today my pupils I shall be taking you on a journey deep into the caverns and behind the scenes of the Mighty Keep Your Coins, I Want Change blog. Now before we get our tour started and you reach for your camera phones so that you can snap pictures of the tasteful decor that was designed by David Lee Roth and Mr Reindeer, it’s not going to be that kind of tour I’m afraid. There is still a bit of tidying up to do from the last staff creative meeting.

No Kittens this is going to be a small yet telling glimpse into the analytics that happen behind the page of Keep Your Coins so that you may take a small peak into what search terms people use on Google, Yahoo, Bing etc to find our humble yet gigantic and awe inspiring blogzilla. These are the real things people were looking up when they found Keep Your Coins for the last two days, and will hopefully come back for more helpings.

Today

Search Views

i don’t want your coins. i want change
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keep your coins i want change
old roman clothes
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james belushi
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Yesterday

Search Views

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i dont want coins i want change
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jeffteevee twitter
keep your coin i want change

Now I know what you are thinking Kittens because believe me I thought about it too.

“Who the fuck searches for Jim Belushi? Twice? In two whole days?”

Truly Kittens I have no idea. All I can tell you is some of our readers and fans truly think outside of the box.

Naturally I found this interesting (actually not really, I am just lazy today) so I tried a few random searches of m own, to see what the fine folks at Google would serve up to me, and pray one of them wasn’t Jim Belushi. Here’s what I came up with and feel free to try this at home.

Celebrity pig fucker (Wow…who knew?)

Crotch itch (She’s a classy broad that Paris)

Happy Weasel (Tee Hee…happy happy weasel)

Monkey Head (Is it…no…wait….oh fuc…)

Drunken Retard (Admittedly expected)

Bear on ice skates kills trainer (?????????)

WHAT THE FUCK??????????

Ice-skating bear from Russia kills circus director in Kyrgyzstan

An ice-skating bear from Russia has attacked and killed a circus director during rehearsals for a show in Kyrgyzstan.

The five-year-old bear, part of a visiting troupe from the prestigious Russian state circus, was wearing ice skates when he lashed out at his handlers and circus staff before a performance of their “Bears on Ice” show in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.

He dragged 25-year-old circus director Dmitry Potapov across the ice rink by his neck and nearly severed his victim’s legs.

Mr Potapov died at the scene from his injuries.

Another circus employee who attempted to rescue Mr Potapov while he was being mauled was also severely injured during the attack.

“The victim has sustained serious injuries – deep scalp lacerations, bruising of the brain, lacerations on his body. His condition is considered critical,” said Dr Gulnara Tashibekova, who was among the medical team who attended the scene.

The bear was later shot dead by police in the Central Asian republic.

The incident was not the first time a visiting Russian bear was involved in a deadly attack in Kyrgyzstan. In 2002 a bear on loan from Russia to the Bishkek city zoo attacked and killed a small child who had reached out to pet it.

In that incident, local experts blamed the animal’s aggressive behaviour on its severe malnourishment.

But deadly attacks are surprisingly rare in the country’s popular circuses, which often use trained bears for comedic effect.

Training bears to wear and use ice skates and even play ice hockey is a standard stunt for the Russian circus.

(Not the actual bear. This is a different Russian bear)

Kittens as loyal followers of the Mighty Keep Your Coins blog you are used to bizarre stories about people doing very strange things. Even on our vastly popular Mailbag articles where readers submit their questions we have earned that many of you out there are a wee bit unconventional.

(Doug from Oshkosh W.I..)

(Dieter from Berlin Germany)

(Paleface Killah from Pleasantville Estates, Long Island)

(“Tingles” Location withheld)

(Brenda F. Biscuit, S.C.)

(Giuseppe, Milan Italy)

We have all learned many interesting things on the wacky roller coaster ride that is Keep Your Coins. There was the story about The Comfort Wipe. We all crapped ourselves when we saw the map of every Mc Donalds in America. Let’s not forget how we all recoiled in horror when we learned about the dangers of tanning beds and who can forget my personal favorite, our look at the simple joy of love and laughing out loud.

There is something we probably didn’t need to find in the news however, and that is that if you are ever going to attach some ice skates to a fucking bear and make him do fucking tricks for a wild pack of fucking humans who will pay to see animal abuse in fucking action, then don’t be surprised when the bear has enough and kills the bastard that made the bear do fucking tricks.

Seriously, what is it with the Russians and performing bears? We’re more or less used to them acting all cold wary again, and we’ve gotten used to their appetite for suicide authors years ago. If it weren’t for those authors many a liberal arts student with a frown to grind would never have gotten laid because they would just look like sullen tits, not sullen and thoughtful tits.

They certainly can’t blame the excessive winters or heavy drinking on their love of tormenting and abusing bears. Here in Canada we do both of those things a well and the closest we ever come to playing with bears for fun is to run away from them as fast as we can and hope that we win. Sure the winters get to us as well, we just express ourselves differently.

(Enter now for the K.Y.C. Caption Contest for this picture!!)

Dmitry Potapov was the guy responsible for handling the big Russian bear on skates. The bear got pissed off and killed him and almost killed another guy. For his troubles the bear was then shot and killed. I say the bear is the hero and somebody erect a shine to him. It’s a pity the bear didn’t get a hold of a few of the paying spectators as well and tear them to shreds.

Keep Your Coins loves animals. They are great pets, delicious meals and comfortable warm jackets and even on occasion when somebody finds a cure for a deadly disease by trying it out on a few of them, we are happy about it. We’re carnivores and are hard wired for self preservation. We know this because we have survived this long and somehow managed not to screw things up nearly as much as we could.

There is a massive chasm however between self preservation and using animals for amusement, and especially when harming or even killing an animal for sport and fun. Bloodsports are not fun, except in the case of this bear attack when if you truly want to take a circus on the road and make it entertaining, I’d love to suggest feeding some bear tamers to some hungry bears but only if the bears get a trophy when they are done mauling the Russian pricks that think animals circuses хорошее российское развлечение.

There really isn’t a lot that a person can comment about on this story. A tormented bear killed one of his tormentors and was shot dead for being…ummm…..rather bear like.

For most readers they will say “oooohh…now that’s a darned kooky story, thankfully the savage beast was put down” and they will get on with their day.

Ever 24 hrs after it happened those wankers at PETA hadn’t said anything. Not a peep. It’s that far off the radar perhaps because it happened geographically fairly far off of the radar. Either that or they are too busy convincing Pamela Anderson to get her norks out again for another one of their massively successful fund raising campaigns that do actually save any animals, certainly not any exploited Russian bears.

(This is what makes PETA freak out, not dead circus bears)

We live in a world where we are constantly shitting ourselves over the environment which we have fucked up rather nicely, how we treat prisoners who are suspected of terrorism (frankly, I’m okay with a little torture. Very few people accidentally find themselves in a cave with 20 other angry people and a cache’ of IEDs) and what country is acting a bit too uppity and we might have to go smack them around a little bit.

There are internationally agreed upon rules of basic human civility that most of use agree upon, even of a few countries choose to ignore the rules, like Rwanda. At what point can we all just agree that torturing animals for meager human mammal amusement is a bit ridiculous and we should probably stop it. Michael Vick learned the not-quite-hard-enough way that killing and maiming animals is a bit of a p.r. boner.

Spain still think bullfighting is a una tradición española encantadora, and we think Spain is great. Rather than allowing the few people like PETA who do nothing more than make money and noise and never actually solve or do anything can we possibly just say that e should draft a few simple rules regarding countries like Russia who have STATE SPONSORED ANIMAL ABUSE as part of their highlight reel?

It’s sickening to think that anybody who says they recycle, choose paper over plastic or even wears the colour green isn’t appalled by this story. This animal didn’t die because it was part of another mammals survival. It kicked the shit out it’s tormentors. Environmentalists see to really care a great deal about their environment but don’t worry very much about other peoples environment.

Even fewer are actually concerned about animals environment unless it is a polar ice cap, and even then only because w use it too and how many left out of that rapidly diminishing group care about the environment of a circus animal, no matter what country he is from?

It’s not like the bears have their fingers on the big red button after all…

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Joe Cameltoes

Kittens as this is the World Wide Web and not a local Pennysaver newspaper we are going to begin todays lesson with a small portion of background information in order to gain a little geographical and political perspective.

This blog is coming to you from Toronto Canada. We are one of the largest cities in North America. We are the most multi cultural city in the world (this is a good thing), we enjoy a socially liberal society where gay people can marry each other if they want to (this is also a good thing because discrimination sucks), we have a fairly decent public transit system, clean water, people try not to shoot each other very much and if you have ever seen a movie about anything then chances are that is filmed here. Basically, it’s as if New York took the vacuum out and tidied up for guests.

The best way to describe Toronto is if Europe and Chicago had a child. We have a heavily congested city that is kept in reasonable order and are flanked by suburbs in a every direction. They are divided into municipalities just like everywhere else and typically when one of them does something politically it isn’t long until the rest do the same. Usually this isn’t a bad thing because it would make life difficult for all of us if you drove 15 minutes out of town and found out the hard way that in a different municipality they had legalized enslaving visitors from a different area code.

I say that this is “usually” a good thing because sometimes it doesn’t work out very well and in some cases it is absolute bullshit;

Smoking ban urged for Peel condos and apartments

October 19, 2009

Peel’s top public health officials are lobbying to ban smoking from apartments and condos in an effort to limit second-hand smoke inhalation.

If their push is successful, apartment dwellers would not be able to smoke in their own homes.

The region’s council is going to examine a report co-authored by Commissioner of Health Services Janette Smith, and Dr. David Mowat, Peel’s medical officer of health.

Their report says that Peel Public Health has received complaints from apartment tenants about smoke seeping into their homes.

“Tobacco smoke can seep from various openings in a multi-unit dwelling, including electrical outlets, plumbing, ductwork, ceiling light fixtures, cracks in wall, floors or doors and through common areas, such as hallways,” wrote Smith and Mowat in the report. “Some units may share ventilation or heating systems, which can further spread the smoke throughout a building.”

Their findings prompted an investigation into whether the city has the authority to ban smoking inside apartments.

Under the Municipal Act of 2001, Peel can invoke a bylaw preventing tenants from smoking, but Smith and Mowat suggest the best route would be to persuade Queen’s Park to enact a province-wide ban.

The province’s current ban on smoking applies only to enclosed public spaces, as well as elevators and hallways in apartment buildings. But it does not stop people from smoking in their homes.

“I don’t actually think that we need to be asking the province because I think it’s already happening,” said Pippa Beck, a policy analyst for the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association. “We have market forces on our side, landlords are recognizing the financial benefits, which are not insignificant, and there is more and more demand for smoke-free living.”

Beck noted several municipalities in Ontario, including Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton, are taking steps to ban smoking in residences.

This month, councillors in Kitchener-Waterloo decided, starting in April, new tenants in apartments owned by Waterloo Region would not be allowed to smoke at home.

The region had been receiving an average of five calls a month from tenants complaining about second-hand smoke seeping into their dwellings from other units and open windows. Those calls represented about 20 per cent of all tobacco-related complaints received by the region, according to a regional report.

In Peel, individual landlords of apartments are also choosing to make their buildings smoke-free.

In July 2006, a smoke-free 53-unit housing complex opened on Cummer Ave. in North York. In 2008, the owner said one tenant had left because of the policy.

Peel’s council votes Thursday on whether to approach the province about the recommendations.

Kittens since most of you are hopefully fortunate enough to have no clue where or what Peel region is, here is a brief explanation.

It is a municipality surrounding Toronto that covers a large chunk of suburbs. People from Peel region drive into our city every day to work, shop and annoy us.They invade our city every day in their cars, make a mess and then go home to their suburban homes.

If you ever find yourself lost in Peel, you will more than likely require a GPS because asking somebody for directions won’t be very useful. You will see nothing but suburban homes, outlet malls, mega malls, mini malls, power malls and muffler shops. Nobody will ever tell you to turn right instead of left at an art gallery, historic monument or even an independantly owned and operated burger joint. You won’t even find a local neighborhood hobo trying to mooch a cigarette from you because there aren’t any. They can’t afford to live there and there not that they would want to because even if they did try to sleep in a park, the cops wouldn’t ask them to move, they would kick the shit out of them. It all looks exactly the same in every possible direction for miles and miles.

(You don’t see pigeons in the suburbs because their homing instincts don’t work)

Okay so enough of bashing Peel. There are millions of them, and if you doubt me then Old Navy wouldn’t survive. Many of you actually live in one of them and hopefully want to escape.

Many of you are one of two groups. Smokers or non-smokers. You are also probably one of two people. Folks who do live in a building, or those who live in a house.

You are most certainly one of one group however, those who pay for wherever you call home and that home is your home and you know this because whenever you are done whatever you are doing you say “I am going home”.

Home is where we keep our stuff. Home is where we cook our food, go to sleep and usually eventually wake up, make coffee and if we choose to, walk around in our underwear watching German porn while we clip wooden clothes line pins to our nipples whilst singing show tunes smoking cigarettes and pretend we are confetti throwing Rip Taylor after a long drunken day.

Why do we do this? Because we can. Because we are in OUR HOME THAT WE PAY FOR.

Non-smokers always screech and howl the same complaints at us smokers. They tell us we are polluting their air, making them sick, damaging their health and making their world a slightly stinkier and more unpleasant place to live. Thanks to them we are forced out of every place to eat and drink and onto the streets whenever we want a ciggie because they don’t like us. They figured that people who smoke should be forced outside.

Smoking and non-smoking sections wasn’t good enough for them. Then smoking and non-smoking establishments weren’t good enough for them. They denied business owners the right to open a place that would cater to either group. They yelled and bellowed that their rights to go wherever they wanted was being infringed upon and because they had to make the choice between going to a smoking or non-smoking pub was too difficult for them and worthy of an Amnesty international tribunal. Now business owners are told they are only allowed to cater to one group, the non-smokers and many of them have had to close up shop because smokers are saying that they would rather stay home, cook a lovely meal and enjoy a cigarette inside the home that they pay for.

(Money well spent)

Kittens this article was found in the Health Section of The Toronto Star. It was cleverly placed in the health section and not in politics to create the illusion of credibility. If it were in the politics section then immediately the readers would start asking the obvious questions about human rights. Since it was in the health section it looks as if some fine upstanding people are trying to make the world a better safer healthier place by forcing us smokers outside of our own homes for a puff.

Due to the fact that it is hiding in the health section and not in the politics pages the human rights issue hasn’t come up yet, except it has, by the people who are supporting this new law, The Non Smokers Rights Association.

So who are these clowns?

What is the NSRA?

The Non-Smokers’ Rights Association is a non-profit health organization that has been at the forefront of tobacco-control efforts in Canada and around the world for the past quarter-century. The NSRA was founded in Toronto in 1974 by Rosalee Berlin, a registered nurse whose allergies made her particularly sensitive to second-hand smoke. It began as a small volunteer group dedicated to achieving clean air for non-smokers.

Soon after the group was formed, Ms. Berlin recruited the NSRA’s present executive director, Garfield Mahood, who had been working on environmental issues for several years. Under Mr. Mahood’s leadership, the association broadened its scope to all public health aspects of the tobacco epidemic, resolutely putting the blame for this problem on the tobacco industry, where it ultimately belongs, rather than on individual smokers.

Professional, dynamic advocacy based on solid research and critical thinking have been the hallmark of the NSRA since its inception. Thanks to ongoing efforts in coalition-building with national, provincial and local health and community groups, the association has helped bring about a sea change in Canadian attitudes towards the tobacco industry and its deadly products. Notable achievements include:

■Successful campaigns to obtain public smoking by-laws in cities from St. John’s to Calgary. As early as 1977, Toronto Mayor David Crombie referred to the NSRA as “the most impressive and intelligent lobby I have ever known.”

■In close co-operation with the Canadian Cancer Society and other groups, forceful campaigning that finally led to passage of the federal Tobacco Products Control Act in 1988, including a ban on tobacco ads and the right to impose health warnings on cigarette packs, which until then had been voluntary.

■Despite intense tobacco industry lobbying, the NSRA convinced the federal government to accept a world precedent-setting warning system, involving stark warnings that take up 30% of the front and back panels of cigarette packs. Even before the warnings came into effect in Canada, NSRA staff were busy explaining the system to health groups in other countries, leading to similar regulations in Poland, Australia, South Africa, Thailand and Singapore.

■Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1995 decision overturning much of the Tobacco Products Control Act, the NSRA spearheaded efforts to obtain replacement legislation from the new Liberal government. After months of heated debate, the Tobacco Act was finally passed in the spring of 1997, re-instating the advertisement ban (except for sponsorships) and giving the federal government the right to regulate the contents of cigarettes.

■More recently, the NSRA played a leadership role in setting up the National “Tobacco OR Kids” Campaign, which is pushing for a Royal Commission on the tobacco epidemic and for major regulatory changes and policy initiatives to prevent the supply of cigarettes to kids and to reduce adolescent demand for cigarettes.

■The association has also been involved in campaigns to obtain provincial tobacco-control legislation, notably the Ontario Tobacco Control Act in 1994 and the Quebec Tobacco Act in 1998.

The NSRA has been awarded the World Health Organization’s Gold Medal for tobacco control, as well as the Canadian Cancer Society’s Award of Merit for creative and forceful leadership in the cause of cancer prevention.

Apart from its headquarters in Toronto, the association has offices in Ottawa and Montreal, with a total staff of nine people.

That’s right Kittens. Nine people pulled this shit off. Nine. Here’s another interesting tidbt from their very own website;

According to the latest results from the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS), for data collected between February and December 2005, slightly fewer than 5 million people, representing 19% of the population aged 15 years and older, were current smokers, of which 15% reported smoking daily. Approximately 22% of men were current smokers, higher than the proportion of women (16%).

According to the 9 people who have an entire organization dedicated to preserving their “rights” and making sure we don’t get ours, 9 non-smokers are more important than 5 million smokers. They also say that they are not attacking smokers themselves individually, but the tobacco industry, which apparently they think operates in our apartments and condos operated by individual smokers individually.

So Kittens since you have made t this far into today’s article I shall assume you either already have or are currently experiencing a great big juicy “What The Fuck???” moment.

You’d be right to as well and here is why.

Going back to the geography of Peel being the suburbs they are sorely lacking in two things. Apartment buildings and condos. There are a few here and there but mostly it is detached housing and shopping malls. On the street where this mighty blog is headquartered there are 17 new condo developments being built within a few city blocks. This isn’t exactly a newsflash either. it is pretty much the same way in every city and their surrounding suburbs. Cities have buildings, suburbs have houses.

Draconian despots like those 9 people who think their human rights in their detached houses are being infringed upon by those of us who don’t live in detached houses always claim that we are killing them. That we are taking more than our share out of the healthcare system than those that live in the civilized smoke free suburbs. They tell us we pollute and are affecting their right to a smoke free healthy suburban life far far away from us and our homes that we smoke in. It is rather like how they made sure that the bars, restaurants and pubs that they didn’t want to go and spend any time in were in breach of their rights to not be there so they had a law passed making sure that they still wouldn’t go there, but if us smokers could no longer go there even if we still wanted to, and even then, nobody asked the people who actually owned the place what they thought about it anyways.

So us building dwelling renters and owners of our city homes are now responsible for destroying the lives of these nine people who are trying to get the ball rolling in the suburbs.

Kittens do you know what people who live in the suburbs do? No you don’t have to break out National Geographic to find out, I shall tell you. They drive. They drive everywhere. They drive to get a coffee and they drive to pick up their dry cleaning and they also drive to go to work, shop, eat, and have a few drinks. Because they drive everywhere there is a side affect. They crash. A lot. A suburb of Toronto called Markham has the highest rate of car accidents in the region. Not the city which is filled with jihadist cabbies, bicyclists, delivery vehicles and pedestrians…..the suburbs.

Cars and the resulting car crashes takes a huge toll on both the environment and the healthcare system. Nobody has ever had a word to say about smokers being responsible for climate change.

Us smokers who live in condos and apartments also tend to have an incredibly smaller carbon footprint than a non-smoker who lives in a large house. We don’t require as much energy because we don’t live in a triple mortgaged stadium crammed full of imported shit that was shipped here from over seas on a fuel burning cargo vessel. Also because we have less stuff and do not consume as much as a non-smoking suburbanite we throw less cap out. By not having as much waste as a suburbanite less o our garbage is hauled away again, in fuel burning trucks.

So if we use less energy, don’t drive nearly as much if at all (I am hard pressed to think of 5 friends I know with a car) don’t kill or maim ourselves as much in car accidents and consume as much imported trash from China one of the worlds most polluted countries and also fork out at least $5 in taxes every time we buy a pack of cigarettes that non-smoking suburbanites do not do then who the fuck are these 9 people to tell us that we can’t smoke in our apartments or condos that we pay for?

In fairness to these 9 people who do not contribute nearly as much in taxes to the system as us building dwelling smokers yet take far more than us, they never claim to be interested in improving the environment. They sure do make it clear that they are very interested in THEIR environment, even if they don’t really live there.

Since us smokers aren’t the diabolical animals we are portrayed to be it doesn’t escape notice that these 9 people at the NSRA didn’t and won’t say anything about apartment landlords or condo builders having stricter building codes placed on them regarding filtering the ventilation inside of the buildings so that smoke doesn’t get into other units something that would benefit all of the tenants.

They also don’t really want the management of these buildings to crack down on tenants or owners of their units regarding any other odour that may possibly if you really tried to catch a smell of it release some stinky things that may occur within their homes. You know, like cooking fish or curry, farting, scented candles, incense, perfume, cologne, rotting compost, pets, cleaning materials or scratch and sniff books.

Rather than address what it is a laughable and simple cheap ventilation retrofit that would benefit everybody, they want us smokers thrown out on the streets and out of our homes that we pay for. You would think they might have thought of this because if their main concern is health it seems that might also be a handy way to deal with an actual health concern for everybody in the form of swine flu.

They also never mention how they would enforce this law. Would you call the cops if you think that perhaps you smelled a neighbor having a cigarette? Would the police have to drop their donuts and instead of answering a domestic violence call have to rush to the aid of a complainant who thinks that you are having a cigarette in your own home?

Maybe they would suggest that all apartments were fitted with CCTV cameras so watchful cigarette security guards can issue you a ticket if they catch you on camera lighting up a cigarette after you schtupp the missus.

(Check it out Norm, the couple in 315 are doing a Cleveland Steamer)

Smokers have more than contributed to our vanishing rights too my Kittens. We have gladly decided that rather than put up a fight, we’ll just go outside and have a ciggie. We didn’t mind in the workplace because we figured we weren’t voluntarily there but we had to be because we all needed our jobs. Sure it sucked, but on the other hand we get to take smoke breaks.

Then when were were forced out of our favorite pub for a cig we also figured we would tolerate it, or just stop going altogether. Certainly the latter as often in the winter months.

We never bitch and moan when we go to a non-smokers house when we go out for a puff because it is their house and their rules and we respect them. If a non-smoker comes over to our homes generally most of us even accommodate them at least a little bit by opening a window.

This proposal however changes all the rules in a very bad way and smokers better smoke ‘em if they’ve got ‘em and show a pair of balls. This is a big deal. This isn’t just about smoking, this is about a vocal group of 9 people making sure that yours, mine and eventually theirs as well civil rights are taken away from us because of a hot button issue that has nothing to do with the public good, health or even the environment regardless of how big or small it is, it is about the few telling the many what they may or may not do within their own homes.

If this law were to pass, and somehow it was actually enforced then anything you now do in your own home that somebody else doesn’t like would become fair game.

What would happen if somebody suddenly objected to the kind of sex you enjoy with another consenting adult, or even alone by yourself?

Maybe a few people don’t agree with the kind of god you pray to in your own home and tell you to stop it or else.

How about if a handful of people think that some of the things you like to watch on your television or the books you enjoy reading aren’t in the best interest of the collective and start banging at your door and haul you away.

Or how about if like many people, you have an opinion on something and you start to talk about it. Then somebody decides you don’t like what you have to say and while you are in your home some cops pay you a little visit and if you are lucky they just tell you to shut up and never think those thoughts again. Forever.

Bad ideas usually come cloaked in piety. Society has been conditioned to give away their rights in small tiny increments because we feel a small concession is a small price to pay for the greater good of us all. This is a double edged sword as it illustrates that in many ways we aren’t the vile selfish arsonists that we sometimes feel like and don’t mind a small bit of sacrifice if it benefits us all. Especially here in Canada we would rather pay a bit more in taxes and make sure we all have equal health care. It’s a small price to pay to be our brothers keepers.

Our rights start to go pear shaped when the noisiest few start telling the rest of us what is or is not okay. Universities which were once havens for free speech, thought and ideas have become supermax prisons of political correctness. The threat of maybe possibly somehow somewhere hearing or reading something that may or may not hurt someones feelings is more important that the right to have our feelings hurt and to learn from it.

The same is true with environmental movement. Bad ideas take to the air because the people with the bad ideas hide their intentions and salaries in the 12 veils of forbidden propaganda. There are rarely if ever sane solutions that benefit everyone, just a few sweeping laws that punish all of those that disagree with them or do something they don’t like and serve only those who came up with the bad idea in the first place. The bad idea that serves in this particular case, 9 people and not the millions of people who seem to be doing just fine and coexisting without them thank you very much.

It is a fine thing to want the best for your environment. That is why we have homes that we pay for and don’t shuffle our way through lives squatting in parks. We paint them, we decorate them and we feel most comfortable in them. If a neighbor gets loaded on PBR and starts puking in front of our door we either call the cops or smack him around ourselves thus depriving the cops of all the fun.

It’s also a fine thing to want the best environment for all of us to share and enjoy. We seek out the best solutions that will work for as many of us as possible and leave the smallest possible impact on our surroundings. This is not the case with the Non Smokers Rights Association. They want what is best for them. They claim that they have all of the answers (all 9 of them, that isn’t even a football team) and they want to come into your home to make sure you do as they say and think what they think because you may or may not CHOOSE to smoke.

They do not mention the impact of living in a suburban sprawl does to the environment that we all have to take care of does to the planet, the carbon bigfoot prints that they stomp all over our shared earth or even that a few basic fixes on an apartment or condo would benefit EVERYONE that chooses to live there.

If rent a flat or buy and condo under the assumption that there are no smokers in the building then you are retarded. You may have a set of keys to the front door, but so do a couple of thousand other people and they do not all think as you do or believe what you believe. If this idea does not appeal to you then you get into your car and go buy yourself a house because houses come with fences and fences make great neighbors.

If you buy a house one day and a neighbor shows up with the cops and they tell you that you aren’t allowed to leave your bunny slippers under your bed anymore because they don’t like it and it infringes on their rights to be against objectifying bunnies as footwear, you will know who to thank. The people who want the right to tell you what rights you may or may not be allowed to have in your own home and they are doing it because they are fighting for their rights to take away yours. Why? Because it is their right that’s why.

Duh.

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The Evening Lowered Standards

Kittens 57% of the population reads tabloid newspapers. That means that 57% of those people you see every day, work with, are related to and otherwise are forced to share a portion of mother earth with……are willingly retarded.

The word “Tabloid” comes from the name given by the London based pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Co. to the compressed tablets they marketed as “Tabloid” pills in the late 1880s. Prior to compressed tablets, medicine was usually taken in bulkier powder form. While Burroughs Wellcome & Co. were not the first to derive the technology to make compressed tablets, they were the most successful at marketing them, hence the popularity of the term ‘tabloid’ in popular culture. The connotation of tabloid was soon applied to other small items and to the “compressed” journalism that condensed stories into a simplified, easily-absorbed format. The label of “tabloid journalism” (1901) preceded the smaller sheet newspapers that contained it (1918).

An early pioneer of tabloid journalism was Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922), who amassed a large publishing empire of halfpenny papers by rescuing failing stolid papers and transforming them to reflect the popular taste, which yielded him enormous profits. Harmsworth used his tabloids to influence public opinion, for example, by bringing down the wartime government of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith in the Shell Crisis of 1915.

In short my Kittens, this all means that 57% of the popular opinion is shaped by tabloid….bullshit. This is where we get our information, opinions, policy, entertainment and 2-4-1 coupons.

Currently traditional newspapers are not selling. People are treating them as if they have been dipped in swine flu and terrorist blessings. Rosebud the sleigh has been all but slayed as the citizens want more candy than Kane. I suppose that’s fine for some. Real newspapers force the readers to use their thinkin’ bones and who has time for that anymore?

Between making the kids a microwaved ready bacon wrapped corn dog and orange flavoured artificial coloured crystal mix glass of sugar water, stopping at the many drive thrus going to work at the Baby Seal Jerky Factory, reading all of the various lol cat emails, stopping at the mega mall on your way home in between trips to the mini malls and then spending some quality time with the family watching So You Think You Can Armpit Fart who has time to read the newspapers? Besides. real newspapers have all of those pesky sections. Modern man doesn’t have time for sections unless it is a sectional couch. There’s also that annoying tactile ink that you get on your fingers. Eww….real stuff is so gross. It’s almost as gross as looking ones actual age or that wierd sound the television makes when it is turned off.

Tabloids are a great way for people to feel like they are reading a newspaper. They have big bold red tops with their name in them, so you can tell it is a quality publication unlike those other news papers that are just black in white and don’t even have a half naked girl named Persephonie on page 3 who enjoys long walks and considers herself as very “spiritual.”

They also have strong opinions on things like what the celebrities were wearing on the red carpet for the “MTV American Movie and Music Billboard Academy Greatest Ever This Month Peoples Choice Scratch And Win Best Performance In An Internet Sex Tape Award Show.”

If heroin fueled celebrity bestiality orgies aren’t your thing and like hard hitting tabloid news then you can always trust the tabloid news to have an opinion that they will give you as well. They always take strong right or left wing position, call for somebody to resign from something, enjoy predicting election results, political cartoons usually involving somebody dressed as a pig at a trough as well as a columnist with a very smart guy sounding name like Worchester Saucington so you know you are reading a legitimate smart person tabloid.

The problem however my Kittens is that most (not all to be fair, but most) tabloids are full of shit. Thankfully, somebody has made a movie about it called Starsuckers.

Tabloids caught out by celebrity plastic surgery hoaxExclusive:

Maker of undercover documentary Starsuckers fielded offers of up to £3,000 for confidential records

Three tabloid newspapers have been secretly filmed at meetings they thought were concerned with the possible purchase of private medical information about public figures who had undergone cosmetic surgery.

Sunday Mirror, News of the World and People were caught in the sting after they were approached by an undercover documentary-maker. He claimed to have a contact working as an administrative nurse in what was in fact a fictitious cosmetic surgery clinic.

The newspapers were offered the chance to obtain confidential medical information about famous clients of the clinic, including actors Hugh Grant, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans and Ricky Gervais. There is no evidence any of the celebrities received consultations for surgery, and the filmmaker, Chris Atkins, said he came up with the hoax to test “how far tabloid journalists are prepared to go” in pursuit of intrusive information.

The response of three tabloids, which sent journalists to meet the undercover documentary-maker, ranged from cautious expressions of interest to an offer of £3,000 for every story printed and a request for the nurse to obtain a “document on everything” held at the clinic.

A fourth Sunday tabloid, the Sunday Express, refused to meet Atkins, telling him his proposal breached the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) code, could be deemed illegal and constituted “a gross breach of ethics”.

Atkins said: “We wanted to do a survey of the newspapers to see if they would rise to the bait.” Although the Sunday Express declined his offer, the other three newspapers expressed an interest and attended meetings with Atkins in March.

The Sunday Mirror appeared the most willing to contemplate the purchase of medical records. Before meeting Atkins, a journalist who claimed to have the “eye and ear” of the editor told him over the phone that his proposal was “extremely sensitive” because of patient confidentiality.

However, during the meeting he asked: “Is there a document somewhere, is there a piece of paper, is there an email or something that would prove that [the celebrity] had [surgery]?”. Later he said: “I’ve never had any cosmetic surgery, but I suspect there is a record in the clinic about the surgery taking place.”

Stressing such decisions are “always up to the editor”, the Sunday Mirror journalist went on to say he expected his newspaper could “get away” with stories about several celebrities who had visited the clinic. He offered £3,000 for every story published and even suggested running an article in that week’s edition. He finished by encouraging Atkins to ask the nurse to “get a document on everything” kept by her employers.

Remember the opening my Kittens, this is where 57% of the population get’s their “news”, what they want to read about and what they accept as the truth. They also jam themselves like walking farting belching Haggis with fast food, watch informative television shows like “Extreme Makeover: The Outhouse Edition”, take 2 week vacations to sunny and exotic Ron Popeil’s All Inclusive Amusement Park Resort State Cook Off Beach Truck Jam Smackdown-O-Tel Experience and hang out with friends exactly like them.

The nice thing about tabloids is that if you own or work for one, you can bullshit all you like. You print yourself a story that may or may not contain a portion of truth and then people buy your newspapers. A day or two later if somebody calls bullshit on your story you find a little spot in the very back pages that nobody reads and issue a retraction.

“The Daily Bollocks issues a correction. It was reported in Tuesday May 13 2009 issue of The Daily Bollocks that Mayor Feltcher was arrested at a Super 8 Motel in the company of several Cambodian man-whores and in possession of 2 gallons of liquid cocaine as well as a case of high explosives. This report was incorrect and we apologize to the now ex-latel Mayor Feltcher, his now estranged grieving wife/widow and his son Tommy (Booger) Feltcher who is resting comfortably in an undisclosed rehab.”

So how do they pull it off?

The Tabloid Story

The key to tabloid story writing is that something doesn’t have to be true to print — someone just has to have said that it was true. Writers can bring in sources and experts to confirm just about anything. They will use leading questions to get a “money quote” from a source, or offer up the quote themselves and use it as long as the source agrees with them. For example, a writer might interview a witness for a story about Bigfoot and ask, “Did the raging beast howl with fury, and did it sound like a demon from hell itself?” If the witness says yes, the story might quote the witness as saying, “Then the raging beast howled with fury. It sounded like a demon from hell itself!”

Writers may also quote “experts” for a story, even if that expert has no credentials or subscribes to fringe beliefs. The president of a local Bigfoot Society might be brought into the story like this: “Jim Smith, Bigfoot expert and noted wilderness guide, estimated that there may be as many as 500 of the unclassified creatures living in the forests of Oregon. He has seen several of them himself.”

Sure the Bigfoot analogy might seem a bit goofy, but how many times have you seen the same story applied to a celebrity, politician or any public figure?

How many times have you read a similar story about an issue?

So my Kittens since this is Blog Action Day and we have established in Part Duh of our series on bullshit that tabloids are totally full of it, we’re going to wrap up today’s fiesta by drawing a small parallel between the fine folks who work and own the tabloids, and another pile of specimens who I do love to out so much.

Here’s a fun little article by a massive money making machine that most of the population believes in and a recent retraction. Let’s see of you can guess where this came from.

End the nuclear age

Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.

We need an energy system that can fight climate change, based on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Nuclear power already delivers less energy globally than renewable energy, and the share will continue to decrease in the coming years.

Despite what the nuclear industry tells us, building enough nuclear power stations to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars, create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste, contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, and result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade. Perhaps most significantly, it will squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change solutions. (Briefing: Climate change – Nuclear not the answer.)

Now the retraction….

Greenpeace changes the politics
13 October 2009

The latest manifesto from Greenpeace UK is the first ever with no explicit anti-nuclear policies. It was launched with the tagline “Change the politics. Save the climate.”

Timed for the return of parliament and accompanied by a roof-top protest and a full-page advertisement in The Times, Greenpeace appealed to leaders of all political parties to “Please steal our policies.”

But for the first time, there was no explicit policy against nuclear power. Instead there were stipulations for any new coal-fired power plants to come with full carbon dioxide abatement and for renewables to make up 15% of all energy.

Most of the 12 goals were expressed in terms of ‘low-carbon’ energy, which should supply all the UK’s power by 2030, according to the group. Development of low-carbon power should be supported in less developed countries, while the UK should invest in a supply chain for low-carbon technology as well as low-carbon research. Nothing was ruled in or out of the low-carbon group.

A bank should be set up that “would lend to major low-carbon projects” and taxation should be focused on pollution to drive down emissions.

Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven adopted the same language in an open letter to British politicians which said: “If we don’t change the politics and take real action here and internationally we will lose our chance to save the climate… So far bold action has been trumped by short term interests.”

The manifesto referred to yesterday’s report from the Committee on Climate Change and analyses by the International Energy Agency, which both recommend increases in nuclear power as part of dramatic action to lower carbon dioxide emissions.

Greenpeace will surely continue to speak up for renewables in preference to nuclear power and maintain its tough scrutiny of all matters related to the nuclear industry, but the change in its stance was welcomed as a “positive step” by former Greenpeace UK exective director Stephen Tindale. He told World Nuclear News it was “very good for Greenpeace to be saying what they’re in favour of, and I personally agree with all of it.” Tindale reversed his opinions on nuclear power earlier this year to support it as a bridging technology to a time when renewables can take the major role in power generation. He has also recently co-founded a new organisation, Climate Answers.

“They call on the government to have renewables provide 15% total energy by 2020 – that’s the UK’s share of EU total target. But renewables are currently at 2%, and the target still leaves 85% from other things that are not renewable in this low-carbon supply.”

Malcolm Grimston, an associate fellow at Chatham House, said it was difficult for an organisation like Greenpeace to change its position on a topic like nuclear power. “If this is indeed a herald that such a change may be in process then they are to be congratulated on their courage,” he wrote to WNN. “It is essential that the Green movement matches its commitment to protecting the environment with a commonsense approach to the available ways of doing it – Greenpeace’s previous executive director Stephen Tindale has realised this publicly, and if the current leadership is following his example it is to be welcomed.”

Hmmmm………………

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Bullshit

Kittens the daily read through the newspapers of the world seeking for something mildly entertaining for you to read at work offers many pearls. Much like an actual pearl, the stories are born out of irritating morsels dirt that have attached themselves to a living being and then yanked away and sold to somebody else as treasure. Much like the pearls though, not all stories are created equal or require an entire blog to comment on so they sit in my favorites until I get rid of them. It seemed like a shame so today my Kittens we are going to look at a few little treasures that gleam with a glistening brown shade…..of bullshit.

So my Kittens, spanning the globe to bring you first flavour of bullshit we are off to New Zealand. Home of the All Blacks and apparently…..a brothel…

Threat to sue athlete for fund-raising brothel

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – The New Zealand Olympic Committee has threatened to sue a local taekwondo athlete who plans to finance his 2012 London Games bid with the proceeds from a brothel.
Logan Campbell, whose participation in the Beijing Olympics last year cost him NZ$150,000 ($110,600) — most of which came from his parents — opened a brothel with a friend in Auckland earlier this year.

Campbell went public with the scheme in July and the 23-year-old said he hoped to raise NZ$300,000 to alleviate any financial burden on his parents and to have more time to concentrate on training.

After remaining silent on the issue for three months, the New Zealand Olympic Committee (NZOC) had written a letter to Campbell demanding he cease linking the Olympics to his business or face legal action, the athlete told New Zealand television Wednesday.

“Based on the Olympic values of excellence, friendship and respect, we would place your actions as totally inconsistent with these values,” TV3 network quoted an excerpt of the letter, signed by NZOC secretary-general Barry Maister, as saying.

Owning and running brothels is legal in New Zealand, where laws governing prostitution are relatively liberal by world standards.

Ummmm……so let’s all get this strait shall we? An athlete is running a whore house in a country with plenty of whore houses because it is legal and accepted unlike some backwards countries so that he can pay to compete in the Olympics….for free? Not to mention the country that he will be representing isn’t going to support him financially? Or how about the fact that he has already spent $110,600 just to compete in Beijing?

This is bullshit.

Forgetting the cold fact that the Olympics are total bullshit that does nothing but exploit young athletes who will compete for free and make old fat men rich, shouldn’t this guy be given money to train and get himself to the Olympics without having to earn the money himself, regardless of how he does it?

If he is representing a country that saying whore houses are okay, then they are okay. If he ran a dog fighting ring or anything illegal then he should be left off of the team, but he isn’t. He’s running a whore house where it is legal and spending the profits to represent his country.

It isn’t up to the Olympics or anyone to decide what is moral. If they were a good judge of morality they probably wouldn’t have awarded the Beijing Olympics to a country with a horrifying human rights record and clearly have taken bribes whilst giving it to them. They also went so far as to ban people who took pictures of the Beijing Olympics from posting them on websites……for free as photo log of their trip to China.

Fuck the Olympics and their bullshit moral pistol whipping. The guy is willing to pay to be there for his country and they should be proud and grateful to have him and anyone for that matter.

Well that was fun, and chocked full of bullshit. So now let’s have a bit of a laugh thanks to another thieving fat old white bastard who is doing some time in Club Fed shall we?

Bernie Madoff in prison-yard brawl with fellow inmate ‘after argument over state of the economy’
By Mail Foreign Service

Convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff has been involved in a prison-yard brawl with one of his fellow prisoners over the state of the economy, it has emerged.
Madoff, 71, was heard getting involved in an argument with another elderly prisoner about the financial markets before the disagreement turned physical.
And according to eyewitnesses, it was Madoff, who is currently serving 150 years for Wall Street’s biggest-ever investment fraud, had the better of the fight.
After the prisoner pushed him, the Ponzi scheme fraudster shoved his attacker back even harder, making him stumble and lose his footing, according to the New York Post.
Madoff then hovered over him ‘red-faced and glaring,’ eyewitnesses said

Madoff is serving his sentence at a prison in North Carolina and hired a consultant about life on the inside before he began his sentence.

The shoving match happened near a sports field at the prison in front of about 20 inmates.
If guards had seen the fight, Madoff and his adversary would have been sent into solitary confinement, another inmate said.

The falling out appears to have been short-lived, however.

By the next day, Madoff and his attacker had made up and the pair were spotted ‘hanging out together’

Granted, the visual image of two old rich white fraudsters fighting it out in a prison yard over economics is kinda funny to say the least, it does point out that there is two kinds of justice. Rich folks, and everybody elses.

That is bullshit.

If two cons get into it in jail, they go to the hole and stay there for a few days. There is no mention about guards doing anything to break it up or any intervention at all. Plenty of witnesses, no guards, no investigation. It even made the news and nothing happened to the guy.

It just goes to show you Kittens, if you rob a bank and you are caught then you are going to do hard ass time. If you rob the bank you OWNED and took money from the people who put money in your bank and get caught, then you get a different kind of justice.

This old bastard ruined plenty of lives. People like him don’t deserve rich white people jail, they deserve jail. period. Fuck him and every other white collar bandit.

Okay then my Kittens, are we all having fun? Super fucking duper. I must warn you however to prepare yourself for a healthy dose of disgust because this next story is enough to make you want to shit a chicken.

American ‘abortion addict’ reveals she terminated 15 pregnancies in 17 years

A woman has admitted to being ‘an abortion addict’ after having 15 terminations over 17 years.
Irene Vilar said she had the abortions not from poverty or fear but as an extraordinary act of rebellion against her ‘controlling’ husband who did not want children.

‘In the beginning I was taking pills and I’d skip a day or two or give up one month,’ she said in a television interview. ‘I’d think I’ll be better next time.

‘But slowly, my days took on a balancing act and there was a specific high. I would get my period and be sad, then discover I was pregnant, being afraid, yet also so excited.’

She claimed she had the abortions so her husband wouldn’t leave her although she failed to reveal whether he knew of the terminations

Charmaine Yoest, president of pro-life pressure group Americans United for Life, said: ‘It really underscores everything we always say in the pro-life movement – that abortion is part of a very sad story for women.’

However, pro-choice campaigners said Mrs Vilar’s book raises uncomfortable questions about abortion as a form of birth control.
Mrs Vilar said of the book’s reception: ‘I am worried about my safety and the hate mail. I just imagine the “baby killer” stuff and I could be a poster child for that kind of fundamentalism.’

The attractive one-time academic prodigy attended a boarding school in New Hampshire and was accepted into a New York university when she was only 15.

Now re-married, she is raising their two daughters and two teenage stepchildren in Denver, Colorado.
‘Motherhood has made me feel accountable,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t made me less pro-choice.
‘It’s just that I understand and feel the weight of the privilege we have in exercising our right to choose.

Miss Vilar married her second husband in 2003 and now lives with her two daughters and two stepchildren. She is planning a new memoir on motherhood.

Sick yet?

Now here’s the thing my Kittens. I would fight for any womans right to choose what happens with her body until the day I die. You never see any anti-abortionists offering to have poor black fetuses stuffed into their rich white wombs. It never happens and probably never will. Madonna doesn’t even want them, and she buys poor black kids all the time.

There is however a big difference who finds themself terminating a pregnancy or even MAYBE two because of any of several valid reasons, but to have one almost every year for 17 years? Are you fucking kidding me? Then to brag about it in the fucking news and court sympathy while plugging her books and one of them is about fucking motherhood? Is this bitch for real?

If she wasn’t selling her books she’d NEVER be bragging about her vagina in a newspaper. Ever. She has turned the right of every woman into a side show and more ammunition for fundamentalist anti-abortionists.

How can this slag sell something as important as a womans right to choose into a few books and brag about what is obviously a clear mental condition? Who is publishing this? Are they all fucking daft? I thought yesterdays blog about BET giving that filthy dog killer Michael Vick a television show was enough to make me sick, but then I read this story and truly decided that intelligent life in America has ended up with the same fate of this womans 15 aborted fetuses. In a garbage pale somewhere and not even used for growing something useful like stem cells.

Since that was a rather sickening story, let’s read something that is an equally bullshit enriched and about the people who would rather women not only didn’t have the right to choose what they do with their bodies, but not do very much at all.

Church removes power from women bishops

• Congregations get option to insist on male clergy
• Evangelicals claim move will avoid Anglican split
The unity of the Church of England is under threat once more after a key committee agreed to automatically remove certain powers from female bishops and give them to their male colleagues.

According to the amended law, this move would allow the male bishop to perform certain functions, such as communion and confirmation, in order to accommodate parishioners and clergy hostile to female bishops.

It follows heavy lobbying from those opposed to the concept of women bishops who have demanded special care in the event of their ordination, an event unlikely to occur before 2014.

The development is likely to further drive a wedge between liberals and conservatives, who are already at war over the issue, with the amended legislation clearly favouring one side.

Ruth McCurry, who chairs a group supporting the ordination of women bishops, accused the church of institutionalising schism. She said: “You will have a group of people who don’t recognise each other as bishops. What kind of church do they think they’re in when they are not in communion with each other? You are legislating this schism into existence and you are creating a two-tier church, a category of second-class bishops. People could refuse to receive communion from Rowan [Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury] if he were to ever ordain a woman as a bishop.

“Unfortunately I have come to terms with the fact that you cannot have women bishops without discrimination, lots of men will be discriminated against too, and this poor committee is trying to find an elusive formula that will keep everyone happy. They can’t.”

The legislation will be bounced back and forth, line by line, between the committee and Synod. At the end of the revision process a two-thirds majority would be required in each of the three houses of Synod before the legislation goes to parliament and, eventually, for royal assent.

Most of the regular reader of the mighty Keep Your Coins, I Want Change know that I am an atheist so most of this is fairly goofy to me anyways. I don’t really understand people who want to worship an invisible man in the sky although I do respect their right to do so, as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else who thinks differently. I really don’t understand people who think they are qualified to speak on behalf of the invisible man and tell other people what he is thinking, not to mention the funny hats.

I do however understand that the people who believe in the invisible man (other sadly not-so-invisible MEN) are perfectly fine with blatant chauvinism, oppression and disscimination of women.

That is bullshit.

Who the hell are these assholes to tell women that they can’t seek the same positions as their male counterparts? Better yet, who the hell agrees with them? If this was a bank, a school, a government job or a fucking hot dog cart the country would lose their fucking minds, but because it is the Anglican church people think it is fine and should be debated because some invisible man somewhere might agree?

When did a cock become the telephone that god wrapped his mouth around to deliver his messages to his flock anyways?

I defy anyone anywhere in any other kind of job to go to work one day (regardless of whether or not you wear a funny hat) and boldly claim that women should not be allowed to reach the same level as men at their jobs simply because they are women and then go on to suggest that all of their customers feel pretty much the same way. Then i dare you to go on to suggest that everyone should talk about it for a while but that ultimately you get to decide the outcome and then you are going to give your decision to the inbred royal family to review and put their rubber stamp upon.

Go for it Kittens. I dare anyone to explain it to your wives, your daughters, your mother, your co-workers, the government, your bosses or even the chick that works at the coffee shop who hands you a scalding hot cup of liquid every day.

Give it a try and report back to me with the results. I’d love to hear them, and forward them to the church.

So then my Kittens here’s a wee nugget about some people who pray at a different temple, and the people who run an equally tilted table.

Casinos spend millions to make losers feel like winners

Paul Isaacs played slot machines, roulette and baccarat. He played so much that, in an obsessive spree lasting less than two years, he lost more than $1.2-million.

Casinos, in turn, rewarded Mr. Isaacs with Rolex and TAG Heuer wristwatches, theatre tickets and limousine rides. And when his home sustained smoke damage, he and his family stayed free at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Ont., for 21/2 months, meals included.

It’s a card casinos play often. Government-owned gaming emporiums are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to provide gamblers with “comps” – from hotel rooms to hockey tickets to cruises – feeding players’ habits and leading some to financial ruin.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information legislation – part of a four-month Globe and Mail investigation – show annual spending on comps in Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island totals more than $405-million, with a large part of it – $276-million – concentrated in four resort casinos.

Instead of trying to restrain problem gamblers, the casinos reward them – making big losers feel like big winners and fuelling a $13.67-billion business nationwide. Problem gamblers account for one-third of revenues, studies show, and government-operated casinos could find out who they are.

Their losses are recorded on player’s cards that are inserted into slots or handed to dealers.

Governments have made some efforts to curb compulsive behaviour. In Ontario, the government spent $39-million in fiscal 2009 on treatment, research and prevention of problem gambling, with the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation adding a further $9.6-million on responsible-gambling initiatives (the highest figure in North America, it says). But the same year, it laid out $558-million on marketing and promotion of casinos, more than half in comps.

No shit.

Government is the biggest vice-lord ever created. They control tobacco, alcohol, firearms, gambling, lotteries, drugs, prostitution, food, the airwaves, pensions and health care. Is it really a shock that when they get into the casino racket they play by the same rules as every other shell game?

Of course they want the heaviest gamblers to keep coming back until they bleed them dry. They are even more tangible than smokers because gamblers don’t have to stand outside like vagrants to enjoy their vice, they get to go inside and drink free booze.

That is where the bullshit begins.

It’s fine that the government is in the casino business. You can’t buy a pack of cigarettes without having to stand in line behind 5 people cashing in their lottery tickets in a store. Ever. Casinos should be on every block. They make a hell of a lot of money that is used to make our country one of the top nations in the world. If a handful of idiots can’t get it through their heads that the house always wins, then let them lose their pants.

It does however reek of bullshit that if they are going to be in the vice game that the same rules don’t apply to ALL vices. I smoke but never gamble. I drink but don’t do drugs because in both cases the house always wins. If people want to go gambling after doing a few eight balls of blow, let them.

If it is fair for the government to entice problem gamblers into their casinos then it should be a level set of rules for those of us who want to drink and smoke in our local pub. People who don’t gamble don’t go to casinos. People who don’t like smokey pubs and don’t drink can go to non-smoking places. It’s just that simple.

There is no such thing as a good or bad vice. There are only vices. It is bullshit to declare one acceptable and another a social crime. Smokers pay taxes for our vice and gamblers roll the dice. The government gets it all and spreads some of it around to all of us.

It’s time people stop accepting state supported religion and gambling as acceptable and smokers third class citizens. We should be afforded the same set of rights as any other consumer of vice and the government should never apologize for supplying them.

Maybe we should take a swing back across a few oceans and see what is going on in lovely old Australia Kittens….

Uproar as comedy act blacks up for ‘Jackson Jive’ sketch on Australian variety show

An Australian variety show host has apologised live on air for a spoof in which singers parodying the Jackson Five performed wearing afro wigs and with their faces blacked up.

American singer and actor Harry Connick Jr, who was serving as a guest judge on early evening show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, was visibly shocked by the performance.

It featured five men in blackface singing and dancing behind a Michael Jackson impersonator, who was wearing white make-up.

Connick, 42, gave the performance a zero score and told the audience that if the act had been performed in the U.S. the show would have been pulled off the air.

Later he said he would not have appeared on the show if he had known about the sketch.

‘I just want to say, on behalf of my country, I know it was done humorously, but we’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that we take it really to heart’, he told host Daryl Somers.
Somers, who had seemed oblivious to Connick’s discomfort as the act was performed, was contrite in the aftermath.

‘I know that to your countrymen, that’s an insult to have a blackface routine like that on the show, so I do apologise to you,’ he said, to audience applause.

Oh come on now….sure that’s fucked up….but we’re talking about Australians. They’re fucking insane. Lovely but insane. it’s not like people still do that kind of thing everywhere anymo……uh oh…..

French Vogue accused of racism after painting white model black for fashion shoot

French Vogue magazine has sparked accusations of racism by using pictures of a white model who was ‘blacked up’ for a fashion shoot.

Dutch model Lara Stone is pictured with her face plastered in dark brown make-up in this month’s edition of the fashion bible.
It appears alongside photos of the same woman with her own white skin, and others of her caked in what looks like white clay, and wearing a series of bizarre hats and face masks.

The shocking images came just days after an Australian TV talent show was forced to apologise after an act performed on the show with painted faces and wigs in an imitation of the Jackson Five.

The magazine’s text accompanying the pictures gives no hint as to why they have blacked up a white model.

Instead a brief introduction to the photos insists they reveal Ms Stone’s ’sense of humour’ and stresses her voluptuous curves are a break from the trend of ‘anorexic models’.

Then it adds cryptically: ‘A real woman in body and in character for whom the pleasure – like the sense – of metamorphosis is not the least of qualities.’

Oh what the fuck is wrong with you people????????

Do we need to explain the bullshit factor to these people? Really?

Australia, France and anyone who doesn’t get it quite yet, repeat after me. We don’t do blackface, we don’t do blackface, we don’t do blackface. EVER.

Jesus people, listen to Harry Connick Jr. Harry Connick Jr!! Not even America would do something that vile and retarded. They aren’t that fuc……oh dammit….

Fuck it I give up.

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