Category: In the News

If you are a reasonably intelligent person who has a little more

ambition in life than to just mark time and collect your bi-weekly

paycheque (or, as the case may be, monthly welfare cheque), “news” that

is generally — and often breathlessly — covered in Time magazine should be old hat to you. A journalist friend of mine who’s written for Time magazine came up with my favourite phrase to describe its preferred reporting style: sustained obviousness.

Inspired by this fact and so-looney-she-makes-The Shotgun-seem-sane

Ann Coulter’s appearance on the current issue, someone came up with the

parody shown below. You can click on the picture to see the graphic in

full size.

John Allison’s webcomic Scary Go Round, which descended from his original webcomic, Bobbins, is currently running a storyline about a mayoral election in the fictitious town of Tackleford, England.

Strangely enough, the candidates seem rather like the parties that

could be vying for the Canadian federal election that could take place

soon  given how the current minortiy government is mired in

scandal (the current government is a minority government; a vote of “no

confidence” in parliament would result in a general election).

When reading this, please keep in

mind that: (a) this is just one ‘umble Canadian blogger’s view of

Canadian party politics; (b) on the average, said blogger is smarter,

better-looking and gets more pageviews than most.

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Tackeford’s Mayor, Mayor Mayor, is rather reminiscent of the Liberal

Party (generally the party you vote for if you are the hard-working

accordion-playing immigrant high-tech industry son of hard-working

immigrant doctors, at least before the scandal…)

Scary Go Round, April 11, 2005. Artist John Allison went back to his pen-and-ink style for a day. Click to see the full comic.

Scary Go Round, April 12, 2005. Click to see the full comic.

Then there’s Mr. Quorn, who’s sort of like the Conservative Party,

recently reconstituted from the Progressive Conservative Party

(generally fiscal conservatives, but socially all over the spectrum)

and the Reform Party (a distressing number of whom see hard-working high-tech accordion-playing high-tech immigrant sons as hard-working salt-mining equipment)…

Scary Go Round, April 13, 2005. Click to see the full comic.

…and finally, Tackleford’s Progressive Party sounds a bit like the New Democratic Party, for whom I shall refrain from comment for the time being:

Scary Go Round, April 13, 2005. Click to see the full comic.

…my Unitarian Jihad name fits my centrist sensibilties quite well: it’s Brother Broadsword of Moderation.

You can get your own at the Unitarian Jihad Name Generator. Like any religion, there’s an original and reformed version.

[via Boing Boing] Given my dislike of cats, I find it amusing that Wisconsin is considering making cat hunting legal. That’s “cat hunting” as in “humans hunting cats” rather than what is depicted in the picture below (click to see it at full size):

I thought I’d never have an excuse to use this picture. I don’t even remember where I downloaded this pic from. Click the picture to see it at full size.

It’s been a busy week at work and at home, so I haven’t had a chance to

cover everything. Rather than do a full writeup on it, I’ll simply point you to some writeups about the big story going on up here in Accordion Land…

• The Blogs Canada backgrounder
• CBC News’ backgrounder
• Although some key testimony in the inquiry is subject to a publication ban in Canada, Ed “Captain’s Quarters” Morrissey is based in the US and publishes some pretty damning testimony, proving the cliche that the internet simply sees censorship as damage and routes around it.
• Former Toronto Star international affairs columnist Richard Gwyn’s astute commentary
• The Liberals lose the biker vote

…and in tribute, my favourite photo of the Pontiff (yes, it’s real):

Vaya con Dios.