Official Stupidity

They closed some local schools at noon today and others were sending students home 2 hours early because a snowstorm MIGHT hit this afternoon. It is almost 1:50PM and while it is snowing it is not storming. All it could be called is a flurry at most.

Not to sound too old, and I know it does, but we walked to school in snowstorms when I was a kid. Nova Scotia has the MOST days set aside as snow days of any province in the country. school starts earlier here and has more days than other provinces to cover it. Yet parents still piss and moan about snow days and missed school.

Maybe my parents were right, the next generation is wussier. :)

What the ... faggot 2?!?!?

It turns out 2 radio stations decided to protests the Canadian Broadcast Standards Commission (CBSC) ban of "Money for Nothing". One here in Halifax and one out west. Q104 in Halifax played the song for an hour on a Friday night. What happened?

Two asshats complained to the CBSC about it. The CBSC announced yesterdat they will investigate the complaints. If they find Q104 guilty what will happen?

Q104 would receive a reprimand from the CBSC and have to read it on air twice. What the hell?!?!?! That is it? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Is it just me or does the CBSC sound like a bunch of morons with no power?

The CBSC is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with no real power to enforce it's rules. It is a useless tool which, looking at the absurdity of their ruling on "Money for Nothing", is governed by a bunch of useless tools.

What the ... faggot?!?!?

I knew that one culture shock I would face when I moved home would be Political Correctness. You can call Koreans many things but PC isn't one of them. In the West we tend to be too PC. Case in point the recent "controversy" of the use of "faggot" in the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing".

A complaint to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council by one person in Newfoundland caused them to issue a ban on the use of the song except for versions with "faggot" removed/replaced. The Council didn't seem to expect as many people to be pissed off with their decision. Instead of being greeted as enlightened and proper most people seem to think the Council are a bunch of PC fucktards with more shit for brains than common sense.

In some ways the CBSC reminds me of Hagwon owners. Becaise one parent complained about something, no matter how stupid the complaint, the owners would do whatever to make the one parent happy.

The assholes that ran Ivy School in Cheongju were that type of Hagwon owner. Mrs. Kim once told me I wasn't to converse with the kids in my CONVERSATION class in English, only talk about the book. Why? Because one student, whose level was too low for the class, didn't understand and told mommy who complained to the school. Fucktards.

I can actually see the CBSC's decision doing more harm than good. Reacting the way they did to 1 complaint in the 20+ years the song has been around just gives the homophobes something to point to when complaining about gay rights.

Not to mention that they even missed the point of the song. It was satire showing how some people talk and are intolerant. Reminds me of a website I used to frequent. They turned so PC it makes you want to smack them upside the head. In a post talking about racism in Korea. "If you are white you are American. Unless you are blond in which case you are Russian. If you are black you are from Africa. If you are SE Asian you are poor and dirty. If you are Japanese you are evil." The moderators considered explaining about racism in Korea was too racist and cut it down to "Koreans pigeonhole people by skin colour." or some such nonsense. What a bunch of PC retards. But I digress.

As the South Park episode showed, language does change over time. Fag doesn't have the same derogatory meaning as it used to. Hell, many of my gay friends greet gay and straight people alike by saying "Hi fag." I guess they should be censored too.

It turns out that some radio stations are ignoring the CBSC ban. A radio station in Halifax played the song non-stop for an hour as a way of telling the douchebags at the CBSC to go fuck themselves. Which is a go way to end this ...

CBSC and the lone pathetic moron who complained about the song ...

... go fuck yourselves.

Close Encounter of the Mook Kind

God damn mooks! We should be able to kill them, or at least beat them soundly, when they are too mookish.

I walk our dog 2-3 times a day. We both enjoy it. I try to stick to the hiking/biking paths behind the house or the side walks. Sometimes you want to change up your route and there are no paths or side walks. I trust drivers here slightly less than I trusted them in Korea. There aren't as many mookish ones but it only takes one mook to ruin your day.

Tonight we took a route that involved a street with sidewalks and a street with none. Of course I walked facing the direction traffic would be coming. I also kept the dog between me and the sidewalk.

We were about 20 to 25 feet from the end of the street, it ends in a T intersection. Down the street, to the right of the T, some mook is speeding . He whips onto the street I am walking down and missed me by about 4-5 inches. He continued racing off up the street.

What a fucking mook. The street was damp, and the temperature dropping. Black ice was forming. And this asshole drives like that. I wish I could have 5 minutes alone with him.

Billy Connolly - Journey to the Edge of the World

"I smoke cigars. I'm happy to smoke cigars. I don't give one shit what you think about me smoking cigars. It's none of your fucking business. It's like brown shoes. I don't give a shit.

But if I smoke cigars there is suddenly no place in the world indoors that I can do it now. because of THEM. THEY, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that i am not to do it. Even though I am prepared to pay to do it.

For instance the last time I was in Vancouver my favourite smoke shop legally had to close down. They will not allow us to smoke cigarettes or cigars in this place. They stopped it. And in the same week they opened a place where you can go and fix fucking heroin!

So my attitude was what's next? A special lane for fucking drunk drivers? I can't wait until there is a health warning on a cheesecake box. Fat bastards." - Billy connolly

Yes, it is true and not hyperbole. You can go get a free heroin fix in Vancouver but you can't smoke a cigar IN a cigar shop. A group called SALOME set up a new spot just in time for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. But you can't smoke a cigar IN a cigar shop. What the hell?!?!?

I remember when they changed the smoking laws in Nova Scotia on December 1 2006. At that time there was no smoking indoors anywhere anymore. It really fucked up a lot of bars and coffee shops. not to mention the cigar shops. A lot of these places had just invested tens of thousands of dollars to install smoking rooms with exhaust fans so they would be up to code. That way those who wanted to smoke could without bothering those who didn't. (What the hell someone who doesn't like to smoke would be doing in a smoke shop is beyond me though.) All that money spent and within a year or so the government changed the rules again, your smoking rooms are not allowed, and you out tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't smoke cigarettes, but I do like a good cigar from time to time. I don't care if others want to smoke. If I didn't want to be around smoke I would go to places that I wouldn't find it. It isn't rocket science. People who smoke have just as much a right to mingle as those who don't. It is easy to accommodate both sides ... but the smoke Nazis don't believe in compromise and they seem to have a lobby on par with the NRA.

Free heroin and a place to shoot up for addicts ... but god forbid you have a place to smoke a cigar. Fucktards!

Speaking of fear ...

Talking about how we, as a society, tend to live in fear, sometimes even wallow in it, made me think of the H1N1 scare last year.

It wasn't only Korea that over reacted to it. Most countries did. If you looked at the actual stats more people DIED from the regular flu than H1N1 (Swine Flu or as the Koreans called it New Flu.) And it isn't a close number. A vast number more die YEARLY from regular flu yet it isn't given the attention of H1N1. A vaccine was rushed into place to combat H1N1. People were given medicine (tamiflu) that wasn't meant to deal with H1N1 and didn't help in MOST cases but they were given it anyway. The makers of tamiflu made a bundle out of the scare. In some places, Massachussetts, laws were passed that said kids could be taken from their parents and forced to have the vaccine shot.

Last week there was a minor news story on the flu in Canada. There was an outbreak in Ontario and they droned on about people not getting their shot this year. I made the comment to my mother that no was worried about it until now which is why the weren't getting it. Now, I said, the media will hype it up and scare the shit out of everyone. Then you hear about how everyone is scrambling to get their flu shot.

2 days later ... the media had blown things up so much that people were afraid of h1n1 again and the latest news items were about how people were rushing out to get the shot. Nothing like a little dose of fear to make more news and get people to do something.

My mother is at risk so I got the flu shot this year. This was under the impression that it was only the regular flu shot and not the H1N1 shot. I don't trust the vaccine they created so quickly for that, but that would require another post. I found out a few days after I got the shot that it was a combined shot. It covered regular (but not all strains) and H1N1 flu. I was more than a little pissed off hearing that especially after seeing a news story about the H1N1/flu vaccine. It turns out the stuff the doctors were giving out had EXPIRED. They weren't supposed to still be giving the H1N1 shots without getting a new batch of serum ... yet they had. Morons.

Billy Connolly - Journey to the Edge of the World

I have been watching the series. It is great. One comment the Connolly made in the 5th episode, the travelouge. made me laugh. Then I realized just how true it is. He said

"I'm really fed up with people saying the kids today aren't the same. They play with their computers and they don't go outdoors.

You have ruined outdoors for them that's why they are in there! You have given them, no you have left them no where to go. There is no spare ground. Everyone is terrified that the trees are filled with pedophiles and that they are going to drop on them the minute they go around the corner away from the house."

It is funny but sadly true. We make ourselves and our kids so paranoid it is a wonder they do go out. It is a wonder that people don't have panic attacks when they see a stranger coming down the sidewalk.

It reminds me of arguments I had with one of my uncles about gay men being boy scout leaders. My uncle was active in the scouts in Ontario. The policy was, maybe still is, if they find out a troop leader is gay they get rid of him.

They have taken the fear of strangers and added homophobia to it and then bent it all out of proportion. They ignore the reality of the situation, a gay man isn't attracted to boys he is attracted to men and in my view made asses out of themselves. I am surprised it never led to a law suit. Odds are it would have in the US. Maybe it even has.

It reminds me of the asshats who think any man that likes teaching kids must be gay and/or a pedophile. Ergo no men should be teaching elementary school kids. It is ok for Junior High and High School but not Elementary. Talk about fucktards.

We are a nation of fear. We instill it in our kids and in ourselves. In ways we let it rule our lives. It is kind of sad when you think about it.