the blog quebecois

A new American Red Cross survey shows many web users would turn to social media to seek help for themselves or others during emergencies-and they expect first responders to be listening.

The online survey asked 1,058 adults about their use of social media sites in emergency situations. It found that if they needed help and couldn’t reach 9-1-1, one in five would try to contact responders through a digital means such as e-mail, websites or social media. If web users knew of someone else who needed help, 44 percent would ask other people in their social network to contact authorities, 35 percent would post a request for help directly on a response agency’s Facebook page and 28 percent would send a direct Twitter message to responders.

Web users also have clear expectations about how first responders should be answering their requests. The survey showed that 69 percent said that emergency responders should be monitoring social media sites in order to quickly send help-and nearly half believe a response agency is probably already responding to any urgent request they might see.

And the survey respondents expected quick response to an online appeal for help-74 percent expected help to come less than an hour after their tweet or Facebook post.

Because my title is better. Warning: Language.

Unsurprisingly, these old texts can be pretty misogynistic. But The Kama Sutra starts to seem downright feminist when it argues against those who would deny women access to its pages. According to Vatsyayana, even “young maidens” should study up. They should also spend their time developing skills in: tattooing, “the art of making beds,” fashioning earrings, magic/sorcery, “making parrots [etc.] out of yarn or thread,” “teaching [real] parrots to speak,” and practicing “sentences difficult to pronounce” i.e. tongue twisters. Character building! Even more awesomely, it is also advised that girls study up on sword-fighting, gambling, carpentry, chemistry, and cock, quail, and ram fighting. Throw cigar smoking in there, and you got yourself a private school education.

Christie Blatchford:

This story emerged because one of Mr. King’s former clients - a black man who claims to have been deeply offended by Mr. King’s alleged obsessive interest in finding a black partner for his wife - broke a confidentiality agreement he’d signed, and for which he was paid $25,000 by Mr. King, ostensibly because the man feared this matter might have influenced some unrelated civil court actions he was involved in.

Oh, please. It looks to me far more likely that he realized he didn’t sufficiently shake down Mr. King at the time, and is merely putting a sheen of respectability on his own conduct. You know, like the CBC did.

A quirky little piece. I was starting to get the knack of recording -- the sound is pretty good. Although I'll win no prizes for my guitar playing, it actually hangs together better than I thought on first listen, with only a few blown notes. Something strange is happening in the beginning, where the guitar sounds out of tune, but later seems to correct itself. I wasn't good enough to tune on the fly, and I don't seem to be bending notes, so I don't know exactly what's happening there.

What's it about? Damned if I know. "Flatfoot" was American criminal/gangster slang, dating back to the '30s (and probably earlier). It originally applied (I think) to beat cops. Pounding the pavement in cheap, government-issue shoes cannot be good for one's arches.

So that seemed like as good a reason as any to repeat the word like an incantation at the start of each verse/chorus, accompanied by the spidery guitar line, increasingly ominous bass, growing sense of dread, and whispers and groans. The rest of the song is just your standard adolescent angst:

Mysterious stuff being put in boxes, said boxes then being put in storage . . . diaries and their "dirty looks" being burnt . . . uh-oh. . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . .

I'm trying to remember if I've possibly forgotten something incriminating of value in storage somewhere . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . .

OK, there were three times I've had to buy storage space:

#1. Beer was involved.

#2. Actually that one was kind of funny. This guy had an acreage out of town with a bunch of sheds that he was renting out. So somebody had given me a couple of hundred pounds of moose meat that I had no room for. It was 30-below that week, so I figured I could stow it there until I could find a friend with some spare freezer space. Then I kind of forgot about it until late in August.

Needless to say the moose did not age well. You practically needed a gas mask . . . yeah, yeah, we've been over this again and again. I had utterly no idea you were storing your favorite neon-green leisure-suit there. Yes, I know that it was well-and-truly a "Chick Magnet."

I've sent it for dry-cleaning more times than I can count, and they just can't seem to get the stench of Death out of it. Must be the way it reacts with polyester.

#3. Just speaking hypothetically, what do you suppose the Statute of Limitations on something like that would be?

So! Conscience clear! Whew!

We never had this convo. Right?

You thought you were rid of me? No such luck! I was incredibly busy for most of last week and probably will be through the rest of the month and much of the next.

Late in '83 I started writing new songs, given increasing confidence that my vocals were up to the task. "By The Lake" taught me how to build a song from the ground up. It actually became good, if slightly mechanical. This is my first take on it.

I added a second vocal with the hopes that the new guy would be able to somehow tease out the melody; and it would have been a neat trick, considering it really didn't have much of one.

Chuck (Fight Club) Palahniuk wrote "Top 10 Things That Would Make the Writing World a Better Place." I couldn't help but agree with point #4. 'Cause it's true!

I discovered (purely by accident, I assure you) that nearly all her books at my local library had been autographed, presumably by Maggie herself (or someone with a very strange hobby). Not sure if the librarians knew what the crazy lady with the Sharpie was up to in the stacks but they had to have been unamused. Horrified, even.

This was one of my better ones from this period. I had written others that were stronger musically and lyrically, but they wouldn't start to show promise until the next round of recording. This, if I recall, wasn't written all at once, but over a few days (which counts as "inspired" in my books). It's pretty well complete in this version.

And no, it isn't about what you think it's about. Get your mind out of the gutter, Doris. A later take will reveal all in the fullness of time.

Jonathan Kay:

Mallick was a smart hire for the Star. Not only is is she getting people talking, she’s also a high-profile pick-up for a newspaper obsessed with "diversity." (Earlier this month, Star public editor Kathy English wrote a cringingly politically correct article lamenting all the "old white men" in the newsroom. "Ensuring that the Star reflects Toronto’s diversity is the responsibility of the entire newsroom," she wrote. "It is achieved in the sources we cite, the people we photograph and the way we play the news.") Yet, I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before Star writers get bored with the three, interrelated obsessions that infuse almost all of Mallick’s writing: (1) feminist self-pity; (2) a curdled hatred of the men (always white, often poor and unlettered) who allegedly scheme to oppress women; and (3) a creepy fascination with male sexual dysfunction, which she imagines to be the cause of everyone’s sorrow, metaphorically or otherwise.

So once again, it is left to a humble blogger to ask the question on everyone's (except for this humble blogger's. I can't speak for all of you sickos, though) mind: The pearls. What's with the goddamned pearls? Does she wear those things everywhere?

In the shower? On the toilet?

While doin' the (shudder) nasty? (Which summons up an equally unpleasant thought -- with whom? Who is the unfortunate tasked with servicing the Mallickosaur?

Judging by her writing, she seems quite lustfully enamoured with some poor sod named Rob Ford. If anyone can get a message to him, it should be: "Flee, Rob! Flee!")

Instead of dwelling on this image, let me propose a more congenial theory: As Mallick seems to have had her pearl fetish from birth, if not before, it may well be that she is simply paying homage to the graceful Kayan (known also as Padaung) women of Thailand. Like them, her neck muscles have atrophied from disuse; should the necklaces be suddenly removed, her massive ('cause it has so many words in it) skull would flop around uncontrollably, possibly incurring a fatal cervical injury in the process.

You see what can happen when we go to "Our Happy Place"?

NY Times:

Sesame Workshop, which produces the long-running PBS children’s show "Sesame Street," said on Thursday morning that it would not show a music video planned for the coming 41st season of the series that features the pop singer Katy Perry, citing in its decision an outcry from viewers who had seen the suggestive video online.

The video features Ms. Perry singing a parody of her song "Hot ‘N Cold" accompanied by the "Sesame Street" character Elmo. Ms. Perry, who is known for playful if sexually provocative videos like "California Gurls," wears a low-cut dress in the "Sesame Street" video, and Elmo is seen running at the hem of her dress while they sing lyrics like, "How am I supposed to play with you?/You’re up and you’re down/You’re running around/You’re fast and you’re slow/You’re stop and you’re go."

You be the judge.

Me, I find it completely charming.

Of course, much of that is due to Katy's charms. She's a lot easier on the eyes (and ears) than, say, Lady GaGa.

Now that I think of it, so is Elmo.

I think that is supposed to be two words; but if Pete Townshend can get away with "The Kids Are Alright (sic)" then I guess anything goes.

This was my first take on what became one of my best songs, at least melodically. It's just me, my acoustic, and a horrible, consumptive cough.

I would be dead from tuberculosis in mere weeks!

But that unpleasantness aside (I struck a deal, the particulars of which need not concern you) I've returned with instructions to taunt you with more of these tunes . . . from the Beyond.

ARABAH VALLEY, ISRAEL:

In a discovery that biblical scholars say could alter our most fundamental understanding of Christianity, recently unearthed manuscripts suggest that in addition to His Son, Jesus Christ, God also had a daughter with absolutely humongous breasts.

Scholars say Tammi of Nazareth may have been a major religious figure nearly two millennia before the bra was invented.

The documents, found in a cave near the Jordanian- Israeli border and estimated to have been composed circa A.D. 200, recount the life, teachings, and death of Jesus' well-endowed twin sister, Tammi of Nazareth. According to experts, the revelation points to a more dualistic conception of the divine, one with the male principle embodied in Jesus and the female principle represented by Tammi and her giant, heaving bazoingas.

"It's a monumental shift," said Boston College religion professor Paul Ferber, claiming that the newly discovered texts are more significant than the Gospel of Judas or the Dead Sea Scrolls. "Tammi has single-handedly undercut the male hegemony we've come to associate with the Christian faith, and added an important new dimension to the holy scripture."

"Also, the various sources are in clear agreement that Tammi had the most enormous jugs in all of Galilee," added Ferber, gesturing with his hands."Seriously. Like, out to here."

CBC:

Alberta should put a moratorium on approving new tailings ponds until the science evolves to better handle the waste from oilsands mining, Avatar director James Cameron suggested Wednesday after a three-day tour of the controversial oil deposits. Reclamation of tailings ponds isn't yet sufficiently viable - either economically or scientifically - to offset the environmental impact of oilsands mining, and the province needs to regulate the industry more closely, he added.

"[The oilsands deposit] will be a curse if it's not managed properly. It can also be a great gift to Canada and to Alberta, if it is managed properly," Cameron told a news conference in Edmonton.

I was waiting and waiting in vain for Cameron to repudiate his claim at the Oscars while picking up the Best Director award for Titanic that he was the "King Of The World." Well, Jim, I`ve since learned that there is another "King of the World," and he goes by the name Muhammad (PBUH).

So if you are the true King, what does that make Muhammad? Chopped liver? That swarthy guy who comes over to mow the lawn every week? How about a falafel made from shaved ham and dog feces?

Not that I give much of a damn one way or the other, but there are certain excitable religious types who might take great offence at his characterization of Chairman Mo. Let us pray that, say, Islamic Rage Boy never finds out about it.

Oh noes! Too late!