The Antisocial Socialist

I know I've been ranting a lot about my city, and the destruction being visited upon it by our Honourable Wife-Beating, Law-Breaking Mayor, but I don't want it to seem that I hate it here.

Example #5201 of Why I Love Toronto (more or less SFW unless your work objects to topless dudes):



It just makes me smile. Far more than this sort of crap does.

Now back to the Ford Nation lulz: Doug Ford hasn't heard of Margaret Atwood, and apparently thinks that the only people who deserve a voice are elected officials. Um. Maybe he should visit his local library and read up on Canadian literature and democracy.

Speaking of evil assholes hell-bent on making my home shittier, check out Harper's G+. It's largely kitten pics, with the odd creeptastic picture of his family and weaksauce political statement. The kitten is pretty damned cute, though.

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[Poll #1032276]

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Your other video for today, via gillen

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Wherein Siskel & Ebert are hammered and talk about violently overthrowing the government. NSFW. Utterly awesome.

Between pink-pistol-toting lesbian gangs:

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and

universal health care causes t3fforism!!one!:

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I am pretty sure that Faux News is one big Situationist performance art piece.

Today's news, brought to you by Ipsos Marketing Research of Ontario (we did a reverse look-up): "Hey heathen, people get old and they die."

And then they hung up.

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Another odd thing I witnessed today: a bike-on-bike fight. An older guy on a bike was yelling that a younger guy on a bike was trying to steal his bike. The younger guy protested. The older guy had a pair of bolt-cutters that he'd apparently gotten from the younger guy. The younger guy accused the older guy of stealing the bolt-cutters.

Anyway, they were yelling at each other, and then the older guy leaned forward and started snapping the spokes of the other guy's wheel with the bolt-cutters. And then hit him! I didn't know what to do (I'm not altruistic enough to get in the middle of two large, angry men) so I started filming it with my camera. What follows is the less-exciting bit of the conflict, I'm afraid.

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( transcript )

I don't know what to think. On the one hand, bike thieves are the scum of the earth, and if this guy was one, he deserved to get smacked. And worse. On the other hand, it's also possible that he wasn't doing anything wrong and this was just straight-up assault.

Help me out, hive-mind?

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Finally, here are some of the photos I've taken recently. Warning: Includes gratuitous cat content and an animated gif.

( look under here )


It would be nice, wouldn't it?

First the bad news: No good deed goes unpunished.
Anarchist arrested for telling truth. (Hat tip: frandroid.) Civil servant and aide found guilty of telling the truth. (Hat tip: peterbilt_47.)

The moral of the story: Shut your fool mouth if you know what's best for you.

Next, an opportunity for piracy. Just sayin'. (Hat tip: zingerella.)

Something for you to watch: GAP: For Kids By Kids. Okay, I laughed.

P.S. A belated congratulations to my UK friends on the resignation of your Poodle. I hope our Kitten-Eater is soon to follow.

I know I said I was out of here, but then I stumbled on some classic bits of internets that I just needed to share.

1. My favourite libertarian has some sage advice for women who are threatened with violence over the interwebs. Some of it is sensible, like not blogging under your real name. Some of it is paranoid, like getting a private mailbox and buying a gun.

Some of it could only have come from a lolbertarian:

• Don't whine about it. If you whine, you're a big drama queen. Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey has dealt with much worse, and you don't see her whining! (Oh, except for in the post I just linked to, and in a whole bunch of other posts following the "I'm the perfect woman" post that made her an internets celebrity.)
• Ignore them and they'll go away. (Because that worked so well in grade school.)
• Don't vote. (I'm not kidding; she actually said this. Maybe that's why the Libertarian Party is so fringe; more people would vote for them, were it not for those internet stalkers!)

Folks, it's the "she shouldn't have been wearing that miniskirt" excuse, in digital form. I love it.

2. Fred Malek, John McCain's funding co-chair, is a Jew-counting dog-barbecuer. (Hat tip: Making Light.)

Take a moment to revel. I did, and then I wondered how I could get a job as a government Jew-counter.

3. Penguins. Chasing butterflies.

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(Hat tip: Pandagon.)

I have been informed by zingerella that, in honour of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa MacEwan, our fallen pressured-to-resign-by-fundamentalist-bigots fellow bloggers, today is International Panda and Shakespeare's Sister Day.

To celebrate these two awesome women (who could really use a note of support, as they've been under attack by complete assholes lately), have some videos:

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Round-up of supportive posts here.

Instead of posting "Thanksgiving Prayer" by William S. Burroughs like the rest of you traitorous louts*, I went and found an article from the Independent Institute about the real meaning of Thanksgiving. I don't think I'm giving much away when I tell you in advance that the real meaning of Thanksgiving, like the real meaning of everything else, is "YAY CAPITALISM."

The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson

Do click on the link, if only to scoff at the author's haircut.

November 25, 2004
Benjamin Powell

Feast and football. That’s what many of us think about at Thanksgiving. Most people identify the origin of the holiday with the Pilgrims’ first bountiful harvest. But few understand how the Pilgrims actually solved their chronic food shortages.

Hey, I know this one! Exploiting the knowledge and generosity of indigenous people, only to slaughter them later.

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

That's right, kids. The Pilgrims were commies.

( Cut like a rich guy's taxes. )

* Just kidding. lopukhov found a video of it! ( Check it out. )

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Commentary seems superfluous. This is even sicker than my previous post.

If you don't have time to watch Borat this weekend (and you should, especially for the Montana rodeo scene), watch this clip of Ralph Klein talking about Belinda Stronach at a banquet. It has much the same effect.

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That joke wasn't even funny when someone used it on me as a pick-up line when I was 15. Also, true colours and all that.