test blog 5

Thank you, Elizabeth May. No thanks to you, Jack Layton.

This is reaching whole new levels of awesomeoness. Go go go!

Did the City of Toronto paint over a mural because a figure in it resembled Stephen Harper? Or was the mural eradicated because it bears an anti-capitalist message? Or perhaps a little of both. In early June, artist Joel Richardson said the City of Toronto painted over a mural that it had commissioned him to create. A city spokeswoman says the railway underpass wall was returned to drab grey because Richardson’s artwork was unauthorized, uncommissioned, political and may have “referred to (Prime Minister) Stephen Harper.” . . . . Elyse Parker, a director in the city’s transportation services department, said the artwork was erased after a resident complained it was political. City records suggested the older north wall mural was commissioned, but not the one on the south wall, she said. “This was not approved by the city and we would not endorse any kind of mural with political messaging,” she said. “There was some discussion that the mural referred to Stephen Harper. That’s the sugge...

I was born on June 13, 1961. I've been alive on this planet for 50 years today. And I'm pretty fucking happy about it. In my belief system, we only get one shot. When we die, our bodies go the way of all organic matter, and that's all there is. Pretensions of eternity are an illusion created by humans' incredible imaginations, a beautiful fiction to ease the terror of the void, the grand compensation for the curse of having the ability to contemplate our own mortality. No plan, no forever, only the here and now. Some people find this worldview depressing. I find it clarifying. Live now. Be yourself. Be present, try always to be alive to the moment. Returning from that philosophical detour... Wmtc6 was terrific. We had a smaller crowd than last year, about 30 people, with several "new" (to the party) faces, both human and canine. Food was great, rain held off, we raised more than $100 for BAD RAP , and raised more awareness about the dangers and futility of ant...

A slightly enhanced version of my recent post about Brigette DePape is running at The Mark: Why Brigette DePape's Actions Were Heroic . I had assumed The Mark was inundated with DePape-themed essays, but it turned out they had only run one , and it was very negative. I'm glad I bothered to send them the link.

Nobody reads anymore, or nobody reads anything worth reading. At least that's what we're supposed to believe. These days everyone is too busy playing video games, watching YouTube and texting. Before that, everyone was too busy listening to loud music that corrupted their morals. Or was it watching TV that rotted their brains? One hundred years before that, the same moral degeneration took place in music halls and pool halls. And of course, when "they" do read - they being other people, for what "we" read is vastly superior - they read vampire stories or Harlequin romances or books recommended by - gasp! - a celebrity talk-show host. Oh, the humanity. The chicken-little view of The Decline of Culture is as old as culture itself. In the literature of every era, you can find a shelf full of cultural critics wringing their hands over the sorry state of literacy today, blaming technology, popular music, feminism, liberalism, alcohol, immigrants, what have you. ...