the blog quebecois

Prime Minister Martin reportedly "very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very concerned."

The New York Post:

April 30, 2005 -- "HANOI" Jane Fonda has at least one admirer of her Vietnam War-era antics. Rosie O'Donnell ranted to Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera in a taped interview that will air tonight: "All I know is that when I was a kid and the Vietnam War was on and Jane Fonda was the only person standing up and saying what every kid that was 9 years old like I was knew — war is wrong and we shouldn't go over and kill people . . . You know [President Bush] invaded a sovereign nation [Iraq] in defiance of the U.N. He is basically a war criminal! He should be tried in the Hague! . . . My publicist says I should stop talking about politics."

We take time from our regularly scheduled broadcasting to shove O'Donnell's snout in this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Forensic experts are investigating a mass grave thought to contain the remains of as many as 1,500 Kurds killed in the 1980s.

The grave, with 18 trenches, is in Samawa, 230 miles (370 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, along the Euphrates River. Most of Iraq's Kurds live in the north of the country.

"We know they're Kurdish victims because of the clothing and artifacts that were found with the bodies," said Gregg Nivala, an attorney with the Department of Justice's Regime Crimes Liaison Office.

[. . .]

Investigators working at the grave since early April have recovered the remains of 113 people. With the exception of five, all are women and children.

Pig.

This has been (aptly) described as the toughest puzzle on the Net. It's not your standard point-and-click -- you really have to tackle it from a codebreaker's perspective. When you get stumped you can look for hints on message boards like this.

This is similarly perplexing. It's some sort of game with arcade elements, but damned if I can figure out what you're trying to accomplish.

Two videos that I found funny. This one is a short clip of a woman reporter doing a roadside shoot and getting absolutely clobbered when a snowplow speeds by.

Then there's this. I've never been a big fan of the "man getting kicked in the balls" comedy device, usually the surest sign that you're watching a bad movie, but this might be the purest distillation of it. It's filmed like an episode of Candid Camera, with some guy in a clown fright wig running up to what appear to be total strangers and kicking them square in the goolies. Then as they roll around on the ground in pain, the kicker points out the hidden camera, shouting, "Yes, you've been Kicked In The Nuts!"

Well, then, a chance to be on TV! A minor misunderstanding! Backslaps and handshakes all round! Cut to shots of the studio audience roaring with laughter!

I was initially appalled -- is this for real? It soon became obvious that it was a joke, and a pretty good one at that. Safe for work if you don't mind the laughter and the repeated punchline.

Update: I must be getting jaded or something, because I don't even see these things anymore; but Matt at the (very good) Maple Lounge blog informs me that there are in fact pr0n banners on the second site, so click on it at your peril.

Ace and his readers are perplexed as to why a piece of valueless dreck like The Vagina Monologues is not only allowed onto college campuses across the nation with nary a bleat of protest from the administrations of those universities but is also welcomed with hosannas, and widely publicized as a shining example of "academic freedom" or some such nonsense, but a spoof of the same travelling menstrual show is immediately clamped down on and hustled off the first campus on which it appeared. Academic freedom for one and for all? Not if it's the freedom to make fun of girls.

Busy tonight. You could do worse than read peripatetic blogger/webmistress Andrea Harris' withering takedown of The Vagina Monologues.

Question: Can a Friday Film Fest feature only one film? I don't see why not.

Warning: Some vulgar language about a third of the way through.

I'm turning off comments on this one.

So, all those things you don't want to talk about?

Have at 'em.

WAGENINGEN, Netherlands (CP) - As a young private from Gaspe, Que., Charles Bouchard wasn't aware just how big a piece of history he was watching unfold on May 5, 1945, when he stood guard outside the brick hotel where the Germans surrendered Holland to a Canadian general.

But on Thursday, as he stood outside the De Wereld Hotel and watched more than 100,000 Dutch residents turn out for a military parade to mark Liberation Day, the significance of that brief meeting was everywhere.

This year's parade of veterans will be the last the Dutch organize -- all the remaining vets are in their mid-to-late eighties; few if any will be alive to commemorate the 70th anniversary of V-E Day.

It struck me, too, while watching it on TV that this is probably the last time that anyone will refer to Canadian troops as liberators. Oh, sure, we're still capable of small, shrivelled gestures like Martin's recent pledge to send 150 soldiers to Sudan. A transparently cynical gesture meant more to prop up his government than to do anything about the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

I wonder if those people will hold parades sixty years hence to celebrate the arrival of the Canadians. What will they praise them for? Watching?

This is good for seconds of actual fun. Playing with the keyboard is probably easier than with the mouse; I'm the world's worst drummer, though, so what do I know?

The ArmaLite Sisters of the Blessed Winchester on maneuvers.

Warning: Music, commentary and sfx.

This is probably not a good way to park cars, among other things.

This is definitely not a good way to park a bus.

This, though, is a very good way to park a tire.

I'm going to be quite busy over the next couple of weeks; posts in the interim will be sporadic, and of dubious quality and shoddy, questionable research. So you shouldn't notice much difference.

Or maybe I'll just put up pictures of the weird.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Robots at Cornell University are making copies of themselves without human intervention. In principle, the machines will thus be able to repair and reproduce themselves in space and other remote environments.

"Our self-replicating robots perform very simple tasks compared with intricacies in biological reproduction," said engineer Hod Lipson, a Cornell assistant professor. "But we think they demonstrate that mechanical self-reproduction is possible and not unique to biology." Self-replication is sometimes seen as the holy grail of robotics.

A video of this is fascinating, if a bit creepy.

Airhead heiress enticed by shiny baubles.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. -- Oscar Wilde

pshhhhhhtttt LIBssss LIBERAL DOG sss DOGFdotdOTdashdashhhhhhss sskk REPEAttt p.-p.-p.-p.vzzzzzzZZZ! REPEAT LIBERALDOGFUssssCKERssssurrou

Beep!

As you know, I've long had my heart set on becoming an officer in Canada's Navy. Or what's left of it. Well, screw that.

I'm off to join the Singapore Navy. It has like, way cooler stuff.

The Smoking Gun:

Meet Dion Milam. The 30-year-old California inmate may be the scariest looking criminal TSG has ever seen. Milam, who wears "Aryan" and "Honor" tattoos above his eyebrows and a swastika tat on his neck, was charged yesterday in a methamphetamine case (his brother-in-law allegedly tried to mail the drug into the Stanislaus County Jail, where Milam is being held on a murder charge). The below mug shot was taken earlier this year following Milam's arrest in the murder case. Milam, who pulled a gun on sheriff's deputies, got roughed up a bit as he resisted arrest.

My apologies if some pictures have disappeared from the site -- I've been using a separate image server for the last month or so (hey, if somebody else wants to pay for the bandwidth, fine by me), and it's been erratic the last couple of days. If there isn't improvement soon I'll have to find another server.

If the picture in the preceding post isn't there, the link to The Smoking Gun will take you to it.

Catching up from last week: I really did think the Liberals would fall last Tuesday. I was sure that Kilgour would vote against and I was somewhat sure that Cadman would, too. In spite of rumors that he'd prop the government up, I thought that he would have found Martin's naked chicanery repellent.

Guess I was wrong. Everyone does have his price.

As much as I admire John Robson (though not his rather garish website), I have to disagree with this (no permalinks, so scroll down to Fri. May 20):

First, Chuck Cadman voted in keeping with his populist principles. I don't agree with them, but his behaviour in this crisis is exactly what you'd expect him to do based on what he'd always said he believed. And that's a good thing.

The Reform Party's (from which Cadman got his start in politics) fetish for polling constituents on Commons votes is understandable to a degree: Certainly on social policy or on matters of domestic import, it's important to establish what the rough consensus in one's riding is, and be guided by it.

At the same time, there is a reason we send people to Parliament instead of just conducting opinion polls. If I've got a busted faucet spraying water all over the kitchen, I don't convene a neighbourhood council to debate about what's to be done: I hire an expert to fix it, and quick. This is not to imply that Members of Parliament are experts in anything other than politics -- but we pay them to sit in committee and listen to experts (real or purported) and use their best judgement to sort out the competing claims.

Edmund Burke put it more eloquently:

Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Where the Reform model of populism turns problematic, at least by my lights, is when it impinges on the country's constitutional machinery. Your vote on Tuesday was not on that absurd dog's breakfast of a budget, nor whether your fellow Surrey North voters would be inconvenienced by an election.

No, Sir: You swore an oath not only to your constituents; You swore also to uphold the honor of Parliament. When the Government uses every procedural trick it can find, including ignoring clear votes of non-confidence; When it blatantly -- with possibly illegal enticements -- courts Opposition members; When the Government is irretrievably corrupt; then it is your duty to bring it down.

You abdicated that responsibility. You blew it, Chuck, and it doesn't matter what Irwin Cotler promised you, either under-or-over the table, because it'll never materialize.

The famous B-52 "Stratofortress" bomber. Note how surprisingly nimble it is in flight.

Unfortunately it ends in a fiery crash.

Luckily nobody was killed. Here's why.

Remember the massive "Sorry Everyone" internet demonstration? You know, the one where frowning lefties sent grainy webcam pics of themselves with insipid messages (in English) to comfort the Iraqi people after the election? (Ours, not theirs.)

You've got to admit, that campaign generated a lot of laughter positive karma. The Red Granger proposes that we build on the momentum.

John Kerry and John Edwards?

Last seen in November of 2004, the intrepid Senators are now working for a bankrupt Russian company.

There's too much Teutonic weirdness cluttering up my hard drive. So let me share the fortune:

This is some kind of Audi viral marketing campaign. Or possibly a Fritz Lang/North Korean propaganda collaboration.

Odd Audi? Odder Austrian thingy.

I like to start the week off with a nice story that renews your faith in humanity and puts a chuckle in your throat and a spring in your step.

But I couldn't find one, so this will have to do:

A REPORTER sent to do a story about a baby squirrel stood on the fluffy creature by mistake and killed it.

Inka Blumensaat wanted to tell how a pet cat had saved the orphaned squirrel by adopting it as her own.

But the friendly rodent jumped on her leg as she filmed her report and she panicked and trampled it underfoot,breaking its neck.

Heike Reher, whose cat adopted the squirrel in Lubeck, Germany, said: 'The reporter started leaping about like a mad woman. She squashed the squirrel completely."

Via A Welsh View

i am letting the telephone ring
cause i don't want to know why
i don't want to hear you explain
i don't want to hear you cry

ani difranco

It's always somewhat humbling to find that something we disregard as the invisible furniture of our lives was once brand-spanking new and people had to be tutored on how to handle some marvellous new piece of techno-majik. These are from an old Bell handbook on telephone etiquette. No doubt future generations will regard our own quaint baby steps with similar amusement. (My aunt has an Edmonton phone book from the same era. Holy Privacy Concerns, Batman! Every residence listed also had the name of each person living there, their age, and occupation.)

Glub-glub-mo-blon?