Some People May Find This Offensive, And That’s Good

Man, in all the flurry of political correctness, we’re getting stupid. But of course this is no news to anyone. What we’re forgetting is sometimes not sanitizing someone’s words is more useful than not offending anyone.

Let me explain. A while ago, city councilor Sandra Tucker of Dacono, Colorado, copied a big, long, offensive, not so funny joke onto a public blog. Wanna see exactly how unfunny it was? go read a PDF of it. Any blinks who want to read it should feed it through OCR software like Kurzweil or Openbook. I would have copied it to the blog, but when I ran it through Kurzweil, it was coated in garble. But I was able to get the gist of the joke. It sucked. Basically the joke was that being a democrat was worse than being a black, Jewish, gay, drug-addled, one-armed, AIDS-afflicted, unemployed orphan in a wheelchair who had a Mexican boyfriend. *Yawn*. Anyway, they asked her to take the joke down and she resigned.

Why did they even bother to take it down? It would do more to undermine her career to leave it up, put a note under it to the effect of “the views expressed here are those of Ms. Tucker and do not represent the city.” Then people can see the person they voted for for who she really is and make an intelligent decision about whether they want her back. Or, the people can ask her to resign because they don’t feel she represents them properly. Why not expose her for the complete and utter douche she truly is? When will people realize that offending people is sometimes a good thing?

I know she can’t become black or Lesbian, and she can only choose to be Jewish, but it would be fine justice if she became disabled, lost her job and somehow got AIDS. I would wish that her parents died, but they don’t deserve to be part of her bad carma. Then she can take another look at that joke and wonder if it’s funny.

DNA, Baby, That Spells Hahahahahahahahahah!

This is just too funny. James Watson, one of the guys who figured out DNA and its structure, started making racist assumptions and trying to back them up with science. He said that Africans, and black Americans who descended from them, just weren’t as smart as white people. Then, he decided to put his genome up on the net for all to see, and lo and behold, he had a lot of African genes!

All I can say is even if he isn’t dumb, he sure looks it.

I Didn’t Know Homeless People Had DVD Players

I don’t know how to feel about this story. I think it’s great that high school kids are raising money for the homeless, but does this really sound like a hard night?

Sure, it was cold that night, but the kids could go inside for pizza, coffee and hot chocolate, play some basketball games in the gym, or play twister in the hallway. Or, they could just lay on an air mattress in their cardboard box with a portable DVD player. Is this really enlightening them on what it’s like to be homeless? I’m all for safety, so if a kid didn’t dress warmly enough, I could understand sending him inside for a while, but this just sounds like a party instead of an eye-opening experience. Like I said, the only redeeming part of it is they had to raise money to be there, so it’s not like they can just show up for a game of twister.

Blow Me!

Since I can’t think enough to compose a long post, how about we start the new year with this snowblower duel story from December. Can you imagine watching this? It sounds like something out of a comedy movie.

It all starts in Levis, Quebec. A 72-year-old woman decides to get out the snowblower and clear her walk. But she sends the snow straight into the neighbour’s driveway. I have to mention he is 43. He gets mad, and blows it back to her. She blows it back at him. Then it goes back to her. Lather, rinse, repeat for ten minutes. Ten minutes? Can you believe this goes on between two grown individuals for 10 fucking minutes?

This made these large children so mad that they faced each other in the street to have at it, and the dude grabbed the old lady by the throat and threw her on the ground. Her husband tried to come to the rescue, only to be punched several times. Eventually, the police had to drag the man away.

Come on everybody. All this over snow? I know snow pisses me off, but lordy that’s a little extreme.

And here’s a small sidenote to the Edmunton Sun. You will notice that the beginning of this article is eerily similar to the snippet you had displayed before trying to get 12 bucks out of me for the full article. I found it elsewhere. Maybe that woman had the right idea when she started eating your paper seven years ago.

Why Is My Name…?

A mother was sitting on the couch reading a book when one of her children walked up to her and said, “Mummy, why is my name Daisy?” The mother replied, “Because when you were born, a daisy fell on your head.”

A few minutes later, the next baby walked up and asked, “Mummy why is my name Rose?” she replied, “Because when you were born, a rose fell on your head.”

Finally, the last baby walked up to her and said, “BLAS CLAFLAS YIFRASSAM TASSM POONNFFFIINRTY.” The mother replied, “Please be quiet, Fridge.”

All I Want For Christmas Is An Odd Combination Of Things

With Carin gone for the holidays and me leaving tomorrow, things are likely going to be pretty quiet around here for the next week or 2. but before we all but close up shop for the most un-vacation-like vacation of the year, here are a few random links to keep you entertained while we’re off eating ungodly amounts of food and drinking ourselves stupid. I’m sure that many of you will be doing the same things, but if you happen to find a spare minute somewhere or if nobody likes you and you’re not invited to anything, here ya go.

*Strange: A Hungarian riverside was made into a beach because apparently the country doesn’t have any natural ones of its own. Stranger:
somebody stole it, sand and all.

*We talk a lot about the things people name their children, but sometimes overlooked are
the things they choose to name themselves,
for instance, Daddy Fantastic, Mouth Who Wants To Know O’Mighty, and my personal favourite, Something Long And Complicated.

*Here’s a quick tip. If you’re throwing garbage down a chute and you somehow manage to knock your hat off and the hat falls in,
just let it go.
Yes the guy survived, but it’s because he’s lucky, not smart.

*We don’t pick on England, England picks on England. They have a
10-step guide detailing clean up and disposal procedures for broken light bulbs
for crying out loud!

*Quick question. If Santa is
such a poor role model,
where are all the stories about kids getting hurt or worse because they’re sliding down chimneys? I mean if you’re going to be a fucking goof about everything, you might as well be a fucking goof about *everything*.

*if you want to be entertained by somebody much funnier than us, check out
Glen Foster’s YouTube channel.

*Money quotes:

  1. In a
    story
    on the death of the world’s oldest man, age 116, a family member is quoted as saying “His death came as a surprise to us.”

  2. Words to live by, courtesy of awesomely named Australian politician Nigel Scullion.
    “Don’t let anyone handcuff you to a post and make sure you always wear clean underwear.”

  3. Upon recovering her stolen Nativity scene, Santa Clarita California resident Vicki Combs told KNBC TV Los Angeles that, in the future,
    “I think I’ll nail it down.”

That’s all I’ve got, but if you need more to look at, head on over to
Joke A Day’s Wild Links page,
where you’ll find lots of fun stuff, including some links right back here to things you’ve probably already seen.

If I don’t talk to you before then, have a merry
festive whatchamathingie
and a happy New Year.

Gone To See Dad

I’m certainly not what you’d call a religious person, but even I would have a hard time resisting the urge to wear a shirt with a cross on it that says “Gone to see Dad. …Be back soon to pick you up. –Jesus”

And while we’re at it, here’s a nice list of gifts for the deity fans in your life that will all but ensure that they won’t ask you for anything next year, or any other year for that matter.

It’s Chr***mas Time In The City

This right here boggles my mind, so please, everybody on the bus as we travel down the road to absurdity.

Ottawa’s Elmdale Public School created controversy recently when it was learned that teachers had decided to change the lyrics to one of the songs that was to be sung during a holiday singalong assembly. the song in question was Silver Bells, and the reason for the changes was to remove any and all references to Christmas.

That by itself is ridiculous, but as you will soon see, it doesn’t come close to being the stupidest part of the story. Observe.

Lynn Scott, chairwoman of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, said the song was chosen by teachers as only one of many at the concert that represent a variety of seasonal traditions, including Christmas and Hanukkah.

“Just to make sure everyone was comfortable looking at their own children in their own classes, they made the judgment call to change the word in that one song,” she said.

She said it might have been more appropriate to choose a non-Christmas song instead of changing one that included a reference to the Christian holiday.

But, she added, “Teachers did something out of the best of intentions. Do we always get it right when we try to do things for good reason? No, we don’t always get it right.”

I’ll pause while you all read that passage again and take appropriate time to marvel at the logic contained therein.

…

…

…

Ok, now that you’ve had a chance to recover, let’s examine this step by step in a rational fashion. Hey, somebody has to, so why not us?

The idea was to present songs that represent a variety of traditions. This is good. Any time you can educate people about the differing beliefs of those around them, I’m all for it. What I’m not all for is making sure that everybody is “comfortable looking at their own children in their own classes”, and monkeying with the very purpose of the whole thing to ensure that they are. You either talk about everybody’s celebrations or you don’t, and if that makes people uncomfortable, it’s not your problem, it’s theirs. Using her reasoning, the lyrics to each and every song performed on that show would have had to be changed so that nobody would accidentally learn anything, and if that was the point, which logically it has to be, why not just call off the whole damn concert and save yourselves the trouble? What her quote should have said was something more along the lines of minorities get kind of pissed off when we talk about Christmas, and nobody around here has the balls to tell them to cram it, or better yet to tell them to take it upon themselves to make sure that they’re better represented during the singing next time.

And what exactly is a non-Christmas Christmas song? Something is either a Christmas song or it isn’t. But just for fun, let’s humour them and see if maybe we might be able to help out a little.

Given what we know, a non-Christmas song needs to be a song traditionally sung at Christmas time that does not have the word Christmas in it, but for some reason, Christmas related symbols are ok. I feel confident in this assumption because they weren’t changing the name of the song to Silver Noise-Making Spherical Objects, they were only whitewashing the purpose out of it. So bells good, Christmas Bad.

And if Christmas is bad, Christ is likely a no no too. I mean just look at his name. Bells 2, the Lord 0.

If the religious folks can’t have Jesus, Santa’s probably a goner too. He, much like Jesus, is considered a fictional character by some, and besides, it’s been decided by whoever decides these things that him and his lard ass are setting a bad example for the children. Bells 3, everybody else 0.

Oh Christmas Tree? Not on your life, buddy boy. Those things are holiday trees now. Bells 4, nature 0.

I’m starting to worry about my contention that symbols are fine. This is not good. Whatever shall we do?

But wait, all hope may not be lost after all. Just look at the scoreboard. Something is winning, and I think there’s a song about it. Perhaps you’ve even heard of it. No Santa, no Christ, not even any Christmas. So what is this magical non-Christmas song? You’re gonna kick yourself when I tell you, and you may want to kick a few people from Elmdale Public School if you don’t already. Are you ready? No really, are you ready? Ok, here it comes. The miracle [is it ok to use that word?] song that would solve everyone’s problems is…wait for it…wait for it… Jingle Bells!
That’s right, Jingle Fucking Bells!

And with that, I’ve done with 5 seconds of thought what meetings full of people who’s job it is to shape our future could not accomplish with weeks or perhaps even months of planning. And when I stop and think about it, that realization is far worse than the original point of this entire post, something that should make anyone with children in our public school system very upset, not to mention quite a bit worried.

Lynn Scott was right about one thing though. They don’t always get it right, and that’s fine. Nobody does. the problem isn’t that you didn’t get it right, it’s that you got it so spectacularly wrong when the right answers were staring all of you directly in the face.

Worst Band Names Of 2007

The part of The Onion that doesn’t make shit up has published a list of
the worst band names of the year,
but for some reason, Band.Zero isn’t on it.

The list by itself is great for a whole lot of laughs, but in order to up the awesome, it comes with site links for about 99% of them. I haven’t gone and listened to any yet but a few are calling my name, in particular Harmonica Lewinsky and The Dead Kenny Gs.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, might well be the most productive thing I do all day. Today is my birthday, and I think I’m going to give myself laziness, hamburgers and beer as a present. This time of year is always insanity for me what with the 3-sided family and hosting the annual [besides last year] New Year’s Eve party, so if there’s a moment for me to do nothing, you’d better believe I’m taking it.