I’ve been seeing Christmas themed ads on TV since October and CHYM FM flipped to all Christmas music this week. If we can’t wait until December like we’re supposed to, can we at least wait until after Remembrance Day to start forcing the spirit of the season on everyone?
Kelvin Lewis takes center stage as the three brothers make their plea for patience. “Marvin wouldn’t sing lead this one,” Kelvin said of his brother in an interview outside a Hallmark store in Detroit. “He wanted Christmas all year round while Wendel and I were Thanksgiving guys. That f**kin’ store we worked in went straight from Halloween to Christmas…made us stay overnight re-bagging all the candy to make it look fresh. Then we’d go home and Marvin would want to put the tree up with those stale-a$$ candy canes that’d been in the family since the turn of the damn century. And we couldn’t even afford lights. We had to move the lamp next to the couch behind the tree. Couldn’t see f*ck all inside the living room the last two months of the year until we got that record deal.”
The Onion, the satirical news company that repeatedly spoofed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has won the bankruptcy auction for control over his media empire — most notably InfoWars, the far-right, conspiracy-minded website that served as Jones’ primary online platform.
The Onion plans to shutter Jones’ InfoWars and rebuild the website featuring well-known internet humor writers and content creators,according to a person with knowledge of the sale.
Jones, one of the most-high profile and financially successful alternative media personalities, built a small empire off a radio show-turned-internet video operation centered around the Infowars brand that focused on false and often bizarre claims about grand conspiracies and government wrongdoing.
Conspiracies such as the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting that killed 26 people being a hoax, which is why this highly successful media empire went bankrupt and now finds itself in much better hands. Families of the victims of that shooting sued and were awarded somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1.5 billion, which Jones and his companies weren’t successful enough to pay, as it happens.
Terms of the sale haven’t been disclosed, but whatever they paid, I’m sure they’re going to make it worth every cent.
Not sure I’ve ever described myself as gleeful, but that seems fitting today.
It could be that I’m way out to lunch on this one because it’s been years since I’ve taken anyone to see Santa at a mall and even longer since I was the one visiting him, but when did those visits stop being free and start costing 15 goddamn dollars?
And just look what you get for that $15! Basically nothing!
From November 15th through December 24th, get ready for a sleigh-load of holiday joy! Whether your little ones have a list of wishes ready or you’re simply looking to capture the magic of the season, our Santa visits are the perfect way to do so.
For a $15 fee, you’ll enjoy a delightful visit with Santa himself, along with 5 digital photos that’ll make this year’s memories last.
“Steve,” I imagine somebody saying because somebody somewhere had to think that charging $15 to visit Santa wasn’t a ridiculous thing to do, “five digital photos isn’t nothing.” And to that person I respond that yes, it is. If it wasn’t, then why are you allowed to take your own pictures on your own camera for free?
From the Q and A section:
Can I use my personal camera to take a photo?
Yes, personal photography is permitted.
All I keep hearing about is how malls are dying because of online shopping. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but if it is, I’m not sure this is going to help. Or maybe we’ve all gotten so used to being fucked out of money at every turn that it won’t make any difference. Who even knows anymore?
You really do learn something new every day. I, for example, just learned that in many parts of the United States there exists something called a rental application fee, and that those words mean exactly what they sound like they mean. I shouldn’t be because if there’s a way to rip a customer off a business will find it, but I’m gobsmacked, honestly.
If we do this in Canada, I’ve never heard of it. It’s certainly never come up any time I’ve rented a place. If a landlord wanted to run credit or background checks on us before making a decision, that’s an expense they were going to eat, because of course it was. It’s what they call a cost of doing business.
Sky-high rents and a severe housing shortage are a challenge for would-be renters across the U.S. But for many, the first barrier to finding affordable housing has become the rental application fee.
James Lopez of Spokane, Wash., had to suspend a months-long housing search because he simply can’t afford to keep applying to more places.
He and his wife still have three children at home, including a young adult daughter. This means — like it does most everywhere in the U.S. — that for each place they apply, all three adults must pay an application fee to cover a general background and credit check.
“And that fee can run anywhere from $35 each up to … I’ve seen $85 apiece,” Lopez says. “Right now, we are not able to put that money out.”
That’s right. Second only to their entire existence, the worst part is that these fees are largely unregulated. And in cases where they are regulated, the rules are so useless that you might as well go ahead and say they’re unregulated, because landlords are out here just charging them anyway without any fear of repercussions. It’s so bad that lawyers are telling clients to go ahead and pay them even though it’s not legal, because at least you might come out the other side living someplace with a roof on it.
Vermont was decades ahead of this trend, actually banning rental application fees entirely in 1999, but legal aid attorneys say their use is still widespread. After an investigation late last year by the news site VTDigger.com, the Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating, but that the issue is “not near the top of the list of the type of complaints” the office gets.
This lack of enforcement is a problem in other places as well.
In 2019, New York set a $20 cap on fees and also allowed reusable 30-day screenings. But Stephanie Rudolph, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York City, says, “There’s plenty of ways in which brokers are going around the law.”
Rudolph helps low-income clients who’ve been charged sometimes hundreds of dollars, though it can be difficult because the law doesn’t spell out damages if landlords don’t comply. They also say there’s not been a lot of education about the recent law, so some landlords and tenants may be unaware of it.
Even when tenants do realized they’re being scammed, Rudolph says there’s another challenge. “There’s also just the fear that if you don’t do exactly what the broker or the landlord tells you, you’re not going to get the apartment,” they say.
That’s a well-founded fear, Rudolph says, so they’ll often advise clients to just pay the fee, even if it’s not legal.
Got an email this morning from our good friend Jason Dunkerley, whose name has come up here a time or two through the years and who is almost certainly involved in a few of the stories where names are missing.
For several years he’s been working on and off at writing a book about his life, and at long last it’s finally done and getting itself published!
If you know anything about Jason, you know that he’s been a lot of places and done a lot of things, and also that he’s extremely modest about most of it. So even if you’re like us and get to count him amongst your good friends, you’re probably going to learn some things. And if you’ve heard the name but don’t know much about the person behind it or even if you have no idea who this is, what any of it is about or even how you got here in the first place, I can tell you from having known him for more than 25 years that there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy hearing his story.
Yorkland Publishing today announced the upcoming publication of Jason Dunkerley’s Visions of Hope: Running Towards My Own Truth, an autobiography of an iconic blind Canadian middle-distance runner who won five Paralympic medals and numerous other laurels during his storied career.In telling his story, Dunkerley introduces the reader to the behind-the-scenes intricacies of top-tier athletics: the rigours of intensive training; the building of rapport among athlete, guide and coach; the development and implementation of winning strategies; the never-ending struggle to excel; the searing letdown of defeat, and the euphoric triumph of victory. Bruce Kidd, a fabled Canadian Olympian and Professor Emeritus of Sport Politics and Policy at the University of Toronto, called Visions of Hope “an insightful, at times poetic, account of the life of a Canadian Paralympian.”Visions of Hope will soon be available from bookstores everywhere, but prepublication orders can be placed immediately at Yorkland Publishing’s website (www.yorklandpublishing.com).Yorkland Publishing plans to release Visions of Hope in a large-type edition and as an eBook by mid-November and is partnering with the CNIB to produce an audiobook.
According to Jason, who I believe because it’s his book and he should know, Bruce Kidd also wrote the foreword.
One last thing. The publisher has started a GoFundMe to help cover promotional costs. There are always a lot of those, and they can be particularly difficult for smaller projects like these to handle. If you’re interested in helping out with that end of things, you can get more information here.
ONN projects that Neo-Nazi candidate Lucas Brennan has defeated three-term KKK incumbent William Kent in Alabama’s 4th congressional district, flipping a House seat that has been occupied by the Klan for more than five decades.
Might as well go ahead and post the election reactions from Colbert and Kimmel while I’m at this. Everyone did a fine job of being realistic and funny in the face of all this shit.
No one tells the guy who cleans the bathrooms that they must be happy about the explosive diarrhea. It gives you so much material!
Watching Jimmy choke up felt more real than anything on the actual news.
And I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but how…(How!) are there that many people who didn’t even know who was running against Trump?
Also, how did we wind up living in a world where the people who often make the most sense are comedians?
Another good election reaction video, this one from the Daily Show.
The question that really needs asking isn’t why Harris lost, it’s why Trump won.
And a related one that I’ve been thinking about. What, to a 2024 Trump voter, would have been too far? I have my political preferences and dislikes just as anyone else does, but if Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh did even the tiniest fraction of what Trump has said and done in the last decade I’d have no choice but to at least consider the possibility that maybe this Poilievre guy might not be so bad. Ultimately I’d probably plunk a vote down on some independent or maybe John Turmel if I’m in the mood to screw up a record, but I would have to think about it. Point is that there should be no political identity or affiliation in any place that chooses to think of itself as a normal ass country that should excuse or endorse any of this.
It’s funny as you’d expect, but there are also a few important reminders. In particular, that history isn’t a straight line. George W. Bush won twice. Remember that? Remember how hopeless that felt? I do. But that wasn’t the end. And neither is this…probably.
As I laid in bed last night, sleep avoiding me at all cost and with the reality that my closest, loudest neighbour just lost his damn mind again sinking in, I wondered what I was going to say about it. Should I even bother? Does it matter what I think? How do I even express this profound worry and disappointment in a meaningful way? How do I, in spite of what I just said, offer up any sort of hope to someone who might really be able to use that?
In 2016, that was difficult, but it was doable. There are parts of what I said then that certainly still apply, but this one feels different. Different and worse.
Last time, you could maybe rationalize it. He lost the popular vote, but won because of a flawed system. People voted for him in spite of what he quite plainly is because he’s a celebrity or novelty or even because they thought “wouldn’t it be really funny if…?” He was a thing that happened. An awful thing to be sure, but one that would correct itself soon enough.
And it almost did. Trump was a one term president. He still had his supporters, but people saw through him now and realized that no, it really wouldn’t be funny if… after all. We could be done with this.
But it never went away. It only got louder and somehow more obnoxious and terrible. But America wouldn’t really go back there, would it? Hell yeah it would. It would and it did. And this time it wasn’t an accident. The country knew exactly what it was doing.
Donald J. Trump is the chosen president-elect of the United States in every possible way you can be, a winner in the popular vote and a winner in that marble mausoleum called the electoral college. This time, I am absolutely sure that a majority of my fellow citizens will get exactly what they want. They will get pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists and an end to any federal prosecution of the incoming president, now and forever. They will get the attacks of the free press and on political dissent that they have been slavering for. They will get the validation for their rage, and the outlet for their promised vengeance, beyond their wildest fantasies. They will get the chaos for which they voted, and which they apparently fervently desire. And there is absolutely nothing that god, man, or the Constitution can do about it, because we did it to ourselves.
We will get all these things because we have expressed our earnest desire for them all through the only true means allowed to us—our votes.
We have decided that science and learning don’t count as much as misogyny and racism. We have decided that democratic institutions making reasoned decisions on matters of national policy don’t count as much as goofy nicknames and sixth-grade invective. We have traded engaging in the work of self-government for entertaining ourselves with a freak show, and don’t it feel…gooooooooood?
There’s no blaming the Russians this time around. There’s no blaming media malpractice. There’s still some blame to attribute to voter-suppression, but majorities elect the people who suppress the votes, which means that majorities accept the fantastical bullshit that is the rationale for those laws in the first place. The American people, which is all of us, got together on Tuesday and chose everything that’s coming for close to the next decade.
There’s an expression I hear a lot these days. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Ok, America. I believe you now. How could I not? You sent all of us in the rest of the world a pretty loud and clear signal last night. You’ve been giving off the vibe for a long time, if I’m being honest. But now there’s no mistake.
You are a nation that has such a fear of and disdain for women that when given the choice of an intelligent woman or a rapist who brags about stripping away women’s basic human rights, you proudly and patriotically stepped up and chose the rapist. When asked to choose between serious policies that might improve millions of lives or selfish, petty grudges and mean-spirited attacks, you looked at your fellow man and said “yeah, fuck that guy!” And when simultaneously confronted with a message of renewal, love and inclusion and a hate fest thrown in the world’s most famous arena by a criminal who literally tried to overthrow an incoming government, you threw your hands in the air, waved them like you just didn’t care and screamed that there ain’t no party like a Nazi party.
If none of that was the message that your vote for Trump was intended to send, I would love for you to explain what it was supposed to have been. We have eyes, ears and brains. We know that hate, bitterness, narcissism and immorality without consequence are all Trump has. We’ve known that forever. And you’ve chosen to be ok with all of it.
Now Steve, where is this hope you promised us?
It wasn’t a promise, you guys. It was a question.
But it is still there.
I think back to my bed last night. Yes, there was the sound of the people on the radio giving out results as they rolled in and of Trump making his rambling victory speech, but there were other things, too. Next to me, there was still a person I love. Outside my window, the cars were still moving. The rain was still falling. The breeze was still blowing. Those motherfuck train whistles were still blasting away even though it was two in the goddamned morning. Eventually, the election talk stopped and the radio moved on to something else for a while. All of that, as I tossed and turned and tried to process, turned out to be a much needed reminder that no matter what, life will go on. That not everything is all bad all the time even when it feels like bad things keep happening. And even though I’ve just finished saying some pretty harsh things about an entire country (all of which I stand by(, that there is still love and good and normalcy out there.
Not all of you voted for Trump or for this version of his Republican party. You did what you could to keep this from happening. You came up short, but we thank you for trying. We know that you’ll do everything in your power to make sure that you’re still allowed another crack at it in a few years. Just as those cars on my street kept moving, so too will you. You’ll pick yourselves up and find your way through, because it’s what people do. Who knows what that will look like, but it will come to look like something. Something better than this feels. Life, as they say, finds a way.
I’ll leave you with this, because I think having to do it twice makes it a tradition.