Let's Get The Tiniest Kid We Know And Try This!

I can identify with the older sister. Standing by, freaking out because of the careless and wiry little sister.

Seriously dangerous...seriously hilarious.

Uh, WTF?

Ok, so I was curious about this move that Stephen Colbert made when he started having musical guests on his show. I figured he was doing the same thing as Jon Stewart, where on the daily show they've had a total of 3 musical guest (give or take) in the past eight years...Tom Waits, The White Stripes and Coldplay...not a bad line up.

Colbert started off with Canadian GODS, Rush. Awesome interview, excellent song (Tom SAWYER), Neil Peart drum solo (drool), and the next episode of The Report had Stephen waking up at the studio with Rush still playing (Ha ha! They have really, really long songs!).

Last night Crosby, Stills and Nash sang one of their protest songs (with Colbert dressed as the missing Neil Young, singing along).

But both of these performances book ended someone who just scared the shit out of me. And my fears were compounded when I readed The Huffington Post late yesterday.

Toby eff-ing Keith.

If you're not familiar with Keith, he a good ole boy country star. Likes his steaks thick, women submissive, and apparently his songs tinged with racism.

I thought that Colbert was going to rip him to shreds. But no. A bit of boot lickin' and a song was sung...I turned the channel.

And here's the song...highlighted with the SCARY part.

Well a man come on the 6 o'clock news
said somebody's been shot
somebody's been abused
somebody blew up a building
somebody stole a car
somebody got away
somebody didn't get to far yeah
they didn't get too far

Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street
For all the people to see

That Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys
You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon
And we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces singing
whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
too much corruption and crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send 'em all to their maker and he'll settle 'em down
You can bet he'll set 'em down...

(courtesy of The Huffington Post)

GAH!

WTF?

Greening the Driveway

I was send this link via the London Activist Network...

It's pretty cool!


http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=98

The Boycott Continues...

And the boycott continues...from my most reliable news source, PerezHilton.com:

-------

It's news like this that makes us happy we live in a FREE country.

According to new reports, China will censor the Internet used by the foreign media during the Olympics in Beijing.

This completely reverses the pledge the government had made to offer complete media freedom during the games.

Sun Weide, a spokesman for the organizing committee, said "During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters."

He also added that journalists would not be able to access websites or any information connected to the Falungong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.

Weide added that some other sites would also be unavailable to journalists, but did not specify which ones.

Oh, and did we mention that the Chinese people have to deal with this every day? The same thing in Cuba.

Their government blocks out certain sites and restricts access to their people.

Craziness!

Time WASTERS!

I find this to be immensely satisfying.

If I worked in a post office I would be horribly unproductive...the bubble wrap would distract me!

Check out this website and pop some virtual bubble wrap, make sure it's on MANIC mode for the most enjoyable popping.

http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/popnow.shtml

W00T!

Get Ready For The Boycott!

She Will SLAM DUNK You!

Check out this MASSIVE fight at last night's WNBA game, Detroit vs. L.A.

Will this make the Olympic bid for gold in Women's Basketball a bit tense?

Well, maybe now people will start watching the WNBA...

Check out a full clip at Perez Hilton...

http://perezhilton.com/2008-07-23-girls-gone-wildin-the-wnba

From The LondonCommons.net

I found this very interesting...

American Apparel's appeal to progressives?

Submitted by Mike McGregor on July 19, 2008 - 1:43pm.

tags:

Have you ever felt conflicted by the urge to support American Apparel's sweat-shop free practices and your reluctance to wear their gaudy clothes in public? I mean "Sweatshop-free" = good, and we always talk about voting with our dollars and supporting progressive companies right?

Well, don't worry about it. When you look a bit deeper, there's some pretty strong indications that American Apparel as a corporate entity isn't much more progressive then a rub-n-tug. By many accounts, AA's image is the fair labour and women's lib equivalent of a "Green Wash" (a "red wash" maybe?). Quite a few stories have popped up about allegations of American Apparel's union busting, degrading adds and the misogynist yuppie that runs it all... Google 'Dov Charney' and see what comes up. The guy is on his fifth sexual harassment lawsuit and his musing on domestic violence are interesting to say the least.

Don't take my word for it:

• http://clamormagazine.org/issues/38/aa/index.php
• http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2270/

One Of The Most Humiliating Moments To Date

10:45am

July 17th, 2008

Wonderland Rd. and Springbank Rd.
London, Ontario

I'm going to Oakridge to pick up a couple of friends for a day in Grand Bend soaking up as little rays as possible while coated in Australian sunscreen.

As I'm driving I stop at a red light at Wonderland and Springbank.

A guy in a big black SUV taps on his window.

I roll down my window:

Guy: You've got something hanging out of your door.

Me: Oh? Thanks.

Guy drives off.

I open my door and am completely horrified.

I have been driving for the past 5 kilometers with my bra hanging out of my door.

And it's not just a little end of my bra. It's the whole damn thing.

Apparently in my haste to get to Grand Bend I inadvertently hooked my bra on the inside stitching of my bathing suit that I was wearing. And somehow didn't realize it until a random guy pointed it out.

Great. Just great.

As if being unemployed isn't destroying my self-esteem enough.

Perfect.

Perks of Unemployment

Reason #2:

Napping!

And not just that, waking up for a nap and thinking:

"Oh shit, I've slept through...ab-so-fucking-lutely nothing. More napping!"

I am building up my endurance to have the sleep schedule I did as a newborn.

Perks of Unemployment

Reason #1:

I can stay up late and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Before I couldn't stay awake- now I don't have to worry since I'm not going anywhere.

It's good to laugh, rather than softly crying myself to sleep.

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Spelling Bee Moments...

I love this kid-

Just what a speller should be, having a good time.

Attack of the Frizz

I took this picture when I was underwater in the observatory in the Great Barrier Reef. It demonstrates my intense frizz that I had that day. What you can't see is how pale I am from barfing on the boat.

I post this today to show you what I have to live with right now.

I don't like being discriminated against because I have intensely frizzy hair that cannot be contained. Or rather can't be contained with any product that costs less than $3/milliliter.

Couple that with the fact that I'm out of a job as of tomorrow due to a lack of funding and I'm very, Very, VERY PISSED OFF AT THE DAMN HAIR PRODUCT INDUSTRY FOR MAKING ME FEEL LIKE SOME SORT OF BIZARRE ANOMALY WITH MY RED, CURLY, INCREDIBLY DRY, FRIZZY AND GRAYING (THANKS, DAD) WHACKED OUT HAIR. HAZEL, THE TRINIDADIAN HAIRDRESSER WON'T EVEN TAKE MY APPOINTMENTS ANYMORE, WHICH REALLY SHOULDN'T MATTER ANYWAY SINCE SHE GROSSLY OVER CHARGED ME ANYWAY FOR A CUT.

I think I may be projecting.

Anyway, I am taking donations of John Freida and Aveda.

Something to Ensure My Fear of Escalators Remains...

I have always had an irrational fear of escalators, but this video is intriguing.

It makes me want to take my tiniest friend and see if this really could work at Masonville Place.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE?!

I stumbled across something deeply disturbing today.

Currently I'm going through my own teensy quarter life crisis. When one goes through these types of 'moments' it is not all that unusual to revert back to the good ole days when you felt comforted and safe. For me that means looking for nostalgia, and I have to cross one of my beloved childhood friends off the list. Strawberry Shortcake.

In the day and age where everything has to be hipper and more exciting more and more people/films/television shows are morphing this is almost an inevitability. Why expend some creative energy and make something new when we can destroy a beloved icon for emotionally unstable adults?

Couple that with the gross sexualized images of children (have we all not shuddered when walking past the Bratz dolls display?) and sacred icons of my eighties childhood are ruined...

I may be over reacting, but I really liked her bloomers.

Needless Machines

I'm a fan of the useless machine- not useless technology, that's different.

And recently I've rekindled my childhood interest in Rube Goldberg machines.

At engineer camp I was awarded the "Most Creative Ideas That Never Work" prize for my Rube Goldberg machine. This just further emphasized that engineering stifles creativity.

Is This What My Dad Is Like At His Office?

Ok, so I'm temporarily obsessed with The Office, the US edition. Partly because of Steve Carrell and partly because I'm oddly drawn to Rainn Wilson's character, Dwight K. Shrute.

I think it's because Dwight reminds me of my dad and what he might be like to work with. Since I've never actually been to my dad's office (the whole security clearance thing is oddly Orwellian), I can only hypothesize that this is what it may be like. However, I only think my dad would be exactly like Dwight K. Shrute if he were not married to my mom and still living with his parents. Luckily my dad is a bit cooler than that. If he wasn't married and living with his elderly parents I do think that people would confuse him for a more portly and bald Dwight.

Enjoy, Annie.

Why Don't I Have Any Brothers???

Ok, so do we all know about this???

In Depth
Aboriginal Canadians

Chemical valley
Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Sarnia sounds alarm over toxins

By Mary Ann Colihan, CBC News

Members of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Sarnia, Ont., think their reserve, which recorded the lowest rate of live male births in the world (two girls born for every boy) and high rates of death, miscarriage and disease, is beyond the saturation point for exposure to pollutants, and the community is making a public plea for action.

The First Nation held a symposium on the issue, funded in part by Health Canada, from March 25 to 27 in Sarnia. Leading scientists and environmental groups from across North America made presentations at the event, which highlighted the First Nation's concerns about the health of the Aamjiwnaang and their neighbours in an area known as "Chemical Valley."

A sign for the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Resource Centre is located across the road from a chemical plant near Sarnia, Ont. (Craig Glover/CP)

Data from Environment Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) — the inventory of pollutants released, disposed of and sent for recycling by facilities across the country — show the reserve is ground zero for Ontario's heaviest load of air pollution. In 2005, 131 million kilograms of pollutants were released from 46 plants in Sarnia's Chemical Valley, the inventory says.

Chemical Valley plants also collectively emitted 16.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2005, according to NPRI figures. This represents 21 per cent of the total for Ontario, and more than the entire greenhouse gas emissions of British Columbia.

More worrisome for the Aamjiwnaang, exposure to toxic pollutants for people in the region is the highest in the province. The report says that 60 per cent of the 5.7 million kilograms of toxic air releases recorded in 2005 were within a five kilometre radius of the reserve. These pollutants are known to cause cancer or are associated with reproductive and developmental disorders among humans.

According to a 2007 report by Ecojustice (formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund), Exposing Canada's Chemical Valley: An Investigation of Cumulative Air Pollution Emissions in the Sarnia, Ontario Area, some of the area's chemical, petrochemical and power plants pollute more than others.

"We see the same names over and over on the list of Top Five," says Elaine MacDonald, the senior scientist at Ecojustice, which is Canada's largest non-profit environmental law organization. The companies that lead in emissions of carbon dioxide, volatile organic chemicals, hormone disruptors and heavy metals include Imperial Oil, Nova, Shell, Suncor and Cabot, MacDonald says.

Dean Edwardson, general manager of the Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association, an industry group that represents 22 of the largest chemical and petrochemical companies in Chemical Valley, says the NPRI data has limitations.

"Some of the information that gets reported is estimated and may not be based in reality," says Edwardson. "It is industry's best attempt at getting data and I'm not sure there is a better way, but NPRI is a snapshot."

Nevertheless, when research about the skewed birth ratio was published in peer-reviewed journals in 2005, scientists from around the world started to call. The Aamjiwnaang pushed Health Canada to help fund the symposium on the issue that was held at the end of March.

Symposium

The Aamjiwnaangs' objective was to address the evidence of injury to health from exposures to chemical pollutants. They invited scientists from Canada and the U.S. and environmental activists from contaminated communities across the globe to the symposium to examine the data.

Ron Plain, the aboriginal program co-ordinator for Environmental Defence Canada and a founding member of the Aamjiwnaang environment group, says a mix of racism and poor municipal land use contributed to the reserve shrinking to live in industry's backyard. Another health survey pegged the band's miscarriage and stillborn rate at 39 per cent, he says.

The Aamjiwnaang also want to prove that the negative health effects are not just being felt on the 850-member reserve. Isaac Luginaah, an associate professor of geography at the University of Western Ontario whose studies focus on the environment and health, compared London and Sarnia hospital admissions data from 1996 to 2000. General hospital admissions were 47 per cent to 90 per cent higher for Sarnia residents. The difference in admission rates for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in Sarnia were even more extreme — up to 300 per cent greater than in London.

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley is among those calling for action on the health problems, saying they are urgent and regional in nature. He has criticized Health Canada for trying to exclude the Aamjiwnaang and the local occupational health clinic from ongoing talks about developing a comprehensive health survey for Chemical Valley.

"There is a price to pay and we have to be realistic," Bradley says. "But when we talk about alliance, there should be no one missing in action."

Jim Brophy is the medical director of the Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers in Sarnia, a Workplace Safety and Insurance Board-funded clinic that provides occupational health services and information. Brophy documented the high instance of asbestos-worker mortality in Sarnia — the highest in Canada — and sees a parallel between the old denials that asbestos made people sick and the reluctance to face the mounting evidence of disease from pollution.

The industry Sarnia-Lambton Environmental Association also supports conducting a proper, comprehensive survey of the impact of industrial pollution on the health of residents. It recognizes the area was a hotbed of mesothelioma (cancer from exposure to asbestos), and says the concerns of workers and the public are of great importance.

"We want to see a health study that supports or refutes the link between chemical exposure and health," says Edwardson.

Looking for clues

Dr. Warren Foster, an expert in reproductive health at the Hamilton Health Sciences Centre, says Canadian researchers are not sure why the sex ratio of 106 boys to 100 girls in Canada is fairly consistent except in areas such as the Aamjiwnaang community. His research points to what he calls endocrine toxicants. These are endocrine disruptors — chemicals that mimic hormones like estrogen, and that are found in pesticides, organo-chlorides, heavy metals and plastics.

Children from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, Ont., play basketball behind the Band Office, which is located across the road from a chemical plant. The people of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation have a birth ratio of girls to boys that is two-to-one, a scientific anomaly. (Craig Glover/CP)

Dr. Foster says in-vitro fertilization research at Hamilton's Centre for Reproductive Care at McMaster University raises another possibility.

"Maybe the male embryo develops at a faster rate than does the female embryo and, as a result, may be more sensitive to environmental insult," he says. "Thus we may be losing males before we move into a clinical pregnancy."

Dr. Ted Schettler, a physician with the Science and Environmental Health Network, a U.S. network of environmental groups, notes that children, from fetus onward, are disproportionately susceptible to contaminants. Early exposure for children, even in the womb, can be linked to diseases that show up later in life, and failure to conceive is part of this continuum, he says.

The birth ratio is a clear signal that something is very wrong in Sarnia, he says.

"I think there is an enormous problem with not considering the cumulative nature of the emissions," says Schettler. "Some contaminants released are known carcinogens. When you mix them together in this complex soup that people regularly breathe here, the toxicology of that mixture is far more complicated than if we think about these single chemicals by themselves."

Calls for action

Michael Gilbertson recently completed his PhD thesis, a forensic audit of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a 1972 agreement that commits Canada and the U.S. to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the lakes. The thesis is based on his 34 years with the Canadian federal government, including 16 years with the International Joint Commission, which resolves disputes relating to the use and quality of Canada-U.S. boundary waters. He says we know enough about risk factors and now political activism is more important.

"We have to form a new social movement," Gilbertson says. "We heard the stories from other communities that have been highly exposed. Now we have to organize to bring about political change."

Getting polluters to cut emissions is a challenge. Ecojustice says only 11 per cent of Chemical Valley plants reported to the federal government that they planned to reduce emissions in the 2006 to 2008 period, and 30 per cent of plants that are listed in the NPRI said they would increase emissions.

But SLEA thinks these statistics may not tell the full story. Edwardson says improvements require capital, and companies can be leery of making promises to the government that might not be kept.

"The problem with those numbers is that they are projections," he says. "There may be a reluctance to make improvements if you don't have the money in-house. Companies are always looking to make process improvements here."

Dr. Devra Davis, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer, spoke at the symposium of communities like Reveilletown and Mossport, La., that were contaminated by chemical industry and where people chose to move away en masse. "We lost the ability to document the nature of the problem," Davis said.

Ron Plain wants the Aamjiwnaang reserve to stay where it is.

"Aamjiwnaang could be a model for the world, where a community and industry can work and live together prosperously," says Plain. "But industry has to take that initiative to begin to implement the best available technologies and lose their excuse that it is not economically viable."

Creepy...

Spelling Bee Moments...

Better than "Do the chickens have large talons?" moment.

Goodbye.

Hello.

I'm never coming back to Canada.

Nope, like it too much here, already.

Nice knowing you.