Speaking of Dinosaurs ...

"Adam naming the animals"

Ok, now this is disturbing. It almost really is time to just throw up our collective hands and shut out the lights on the whole southern half of the United States. Listen, just because a book written two thousand plus years ago tells you that your god created everything we see here doesn't necessarily make it so. If I am looking for a phone number I wouldn't rely on last year's phone book, and it is this same line of thinking that makes me hesitant to consult a book that is over two thousand years old when I am looking for scientific information relating to this world of ours. This book was written long before the "scientific method" came into vogue and as such leaves a lot to be desired if we are to consult it as a science text. What is wrong with people that they want to take this book so literally? Why would they want to make a place like this? Why would they say things like this? Have they consulted any other sources than their book, or are they so blinded by dogma that their ears and minds are deaf to reason?

And what about all those people who could possibly benefit from some access to the information presented in the IMAX films that will now not make it into the heart of darkness? Has the religious right taken such a stranglehold over U.S. society that running an IMAX movie that a small percentage of the population sees as "controversial" is now not done because of the climate of fear that has been created? Wrong I say. Many IMAX theatres are located in "Science Centres" and not churches, Sunday schools, mosques or synagogues. Where is the conflict? Where is the need to back down from promoting a scientific point of view? Where is the backbone?

Why Can't My Party Have a Hip Spokesperson Like Elsie Wayne?

Or ... Conservatism has never looked so cool.

I really do not know what I was thinking all these years. It has always seemed to me like the Conservative Party ( Reform, Progressive Conservative, Conservative Reform Alliance Party, Alliance ... who can keep up) had a rather stuffy image. But look at Elsie, with that slight smile, that ever so Mona Lisaesque upturned mouth, the slightly raised eyebrow, that plastered in place shock of white hair. Elsie rocks and she knows it. And this week she let us all know it by delivering a refreshing blast of maritime air at the Conservative convention in Montreal. Here is a woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. She spoke up loud and clear, stating that women, conservative and otherwise, should not be able to exercise their personal freedom to procure an abortion, and instead she would be in favor of outlawing legal abortion in Canada. Rock on Elsie. In any other party in Canada she would run the risk of being run out as the senile dithering aunt who complains too loudly at family functions about gays getting married, and whatever happened to the days when men married women, and women stayed home and had babies and washed clothes and cooked and cleaned and went a little insane and perhaps needed to get some valium to help with the insanity, but there's nothing wrong with a little prescription medication now and then so long as it is patent protected for at least twenty years, so long as it helps you make it through the day. But this is the Conservative party. They embrace Elsie and her narrow minded, pinch faced view of the world as their own and loudly applaud her.

When it comes to people who wish to live together, whether they are women or men, why do they have to be out here in the public always wanting to call it marriage? Why are they in parades? Why are men dressed up as women on floats? They do not see us getting up on floats to say we are husband and wife. We do not do that. Why do they have to go around trying to get a whole lot of publicity? If they are going to live together, they can go live together and shut up about it. There is no need for this nonsense whatsoever and we should not have to tolerate it in Canada.

The above is Elsie taken from transcripts published by the House of Commons. Rock on Elsie and rock on Conservative Party of Canada, you dinosaurs.

Excellent Icelandic Travelogue

"The lady from the suite below us I see at breakfast, a big bear of a woman who looks as all the American tourists in Iceland do: pissed off and annoyed.

Hamilton based cartoon artist David Collier (of Drawn and Quarterly) is attending the NINE Comics Festival exhibition at the Reykjavik Art Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland. CBC , Canada's public broadcaster, is posting his impressions of his time in Iceland in a neat little travelogue which can be viewed here. Say what you will about the CBC and whether or not it should be spending our tax dollars to cover the Olympics, or NHL hockey but in my opinion it is one of the best outlets going right now in Canada for finding out what is really going on. Not just the sensational type news stories, but what is going on all across this great land of ours and what we as Canadians are accomplishing abroad.

Burroughs, the WTC and capitalism

This is up for grabs on eBay. Looks like w.s. burroughs wasn't down with the capitalist symbol that was the WTC. I also found this interesting. Seems like the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism is running a little short on funds and is asking for donations. Always tough to see die-hard capitalists down on their luck and begging for hand-outs. Now something I did not like to see. Seems like it is business as usual for the Bush clan, and is it me or did Dubya capitalize the letter "c" in the word "cocky" (now "Cocky") usually used to describe him since his election win last November?
The original "Cocky" Bush, and the new and improved version:

(notice the goat horns). Maybe George is just a metal fan, a Texas Longhorns fan or perhaps he is sending out some secret Masonic salute to his brethren, who knows? What I do know is that it runs in the family, as does the seemingly innocent ability to profit from the spoils of war and the "war on terror". Rock on you crazy Bushes. Makes you wonder what WSB would be aiming at today if he were alive. Cheers.

Begin at the beginning

I was born not only fully conscious, but also cut my own umbilical cord. My mother was really into providing her first born with a good start, and therefore kept a set of headphones attatched to her burgeoning belly for twenty four hours a day after the first trimester, and kept a steady stream of audio books flowing. I completed a university level education by absorbing a steady stream of info from all the content mainlined into my brain, and being a fetus sleep was not an issue. I never slept, I subsisted on a diet of nutrients from my mother's blood supply and knowledge from the headphones. I could not wait to develop enough to leave the womb, I had so much to say, many questions to ask and a mother to become acquainted with. My birth went disastrously wrong though, and rather than the beginning of my life was nearly the end. When the time came and I felt the rhythmic contractions that signaled my impending trip to the world, I was excited and as the labor progressed I made my way into position and prepared to greet the world. I was close to the opening of the birth canal when I stopped moving forward and felt a tightening constriction around my neck. In my haste to exit the womb I had allowed the umbilical cord to loop itself around my neck, and with each contraction it tightened itself around my neck. I knew I had little time before the blood supply to my brain would be constricted and brain damage would occur so I had to act fast. I wiggled an arm free, twisted and thrust my tiny limb into the coldness that is the world. I finger-spelled the word "scalpel" two or three times in quick succession. Luckily the doctor had done some volunteer work among deaf laplanders in Finland and quickly and without hesitation handed me the scalpel. I was very careful bringing the sharp instrument back into my soft home so as not to cause further problems. I then cut the cord, thereby freeing myself to be born.