Isn't it amazing that we'll soon know more about Mars and whether there is life on the Red Planet....
Than we do about these humans in the heart of the Amazon Jungle ?
Who look like they want to meet us about as much as the Martians do.
And who can blame them? I figure the witchdoctor is having a hard time explaining that Big Buzzard in the sky. I wonder whether he's telling them it's a good omen. Or warning them it's the beginning of The End. Unless they bring him a whole pile of monkey meat.....AND six luscious virgins. Isn't religion ALWAYS like that?
Or are they just scared and confused? Like the rest of us on Planet Earth.....
I don't know. But after what we've done to THEIR jungle.
I think we'd better leave them alone. And take our chances with the Martians.... Have a great weekend everyone !
Well Spring is finally here...and it's time for my annual ritual. Time to try to give up smoking before I end up like this guy.
I'm just not sure how I'm going to do it.
My mum says chewing gum turns a gentleman into a gangster. And the last thing I need is to have Julie Couillard come after me.
And I'm afraid of the patch. No...not the biker patches....the nicotine kind. Last year Sébastien slapped one on my bum while I was sleeping.And when I woke up...and had my usual triple expresso and a cigarette...for a moment I thought I could fly. And then I practically DIED.
I suppose that leaves willpower. *sigh* But not really. As my cousin Simple Simon said to the pieman: Alas I have not ANY. So I don't know what I'm going to do. But you can be sure of one thing.... I WON'T be quitting this way...
Yikes. That WAS pretty shocking. And how about that FREE Miracle Spring Water ? That can get you a job.
The other day I wrote a post about a memorial to the gay victims of the Holocaust. So you can imagine how horrified I was to see this. A leading Holocaust scholar has criticized a monument in Berlin to homosexual victims of Nazi Germany unveiled this week, saying the location was poorly chosen. "The location was particularly poorly chosen for this monument. If visitors have the impression that there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals, it's a scandal," Gutman said, according to AFP. "A sense of proportion must be maintained." And a sense of proportion isn't maintained? A scandal? Over a small concrete cube like this one? From a scholar and a Holocaust survivor associated with the Yad Vashem Institute? Words fail me. So I think I'll let Dr Dawg speak to it instead. All I would add to that is that Gutman's words sadden and disappoint me. Because although it's right to acknowledge the scale and genocidal intention of the Jewish Holocaust. Not to recognize the suffering of others murdered by the Nazis for who they were is simply unforgivable. But what do you expect from a man who would say this? Gutman, himself a Holocaust survivor, said the Nazis persecuted "exclusively German" homosexuals, many of them Nazis. They were "victims of internal political battles within the NSDAP," the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler, he said. The gay victims of the Holocaust as Nazis?
Even though they were cruelly abused by both guards and inmates. Used for medical experiments. Sixty per cent didn't survive. And none are alive now to defend themselves.
How truly evil is that?
I honour ALL the victims of the Holocaust. I believe that they would want me to work for a better world where genocide isn't allowed to happen. Never again. That wretched old bigot dishonours the memory of all who died. He should hang his head in shame. And how should gay people deal with this latest outrage? The same old. Keep on fighting the hate that leads to genocide. Remember the dead, and all those who are still being assaulted, tortured, or murdered all over the world. And of course keep the kiss alive....
As Great Shrunken Leader continues his farcical visit to Europe.
"The speech was really just a once-over-lightly about how beautiful Canada is," Boag said. "How many lakes and rivers and streams and mountains and forests and fields and so on [the country] has."
Where everyone thinks he's a boring Kyoto killing, death penalty supporting, pathetic Yankee stooge.
According to Montreal-based media watchdog Influence Communication stories about Bernier and Couillard ran in 575 media outlets in 44 countries around the world during the first 48 hours. It must be a really humiliating experience. But not as humiliating as it's going to be when Obama becomes President.
Multiple sources say the Canadian note questioning the Democrat frontrunner's public promise to reopen NAFTA was leaked from the Prime Minister's Office to a Republican contact before it made American headline news.
"This was a very deliberate piece of business for political purpose," one of the sources said. "It puts political ideology ahead of what's good for the country."
Playing with the truth to fool the Europeans....or protect an incompetent Minister caught with his briefs missing... just makes you a low life Con liar. Which is par for the course.
Fucking with the internal democratic business of a neighbour and biggest trading partner is playing with fire. And we could ALL get burned. But then Canadians shouldn't be surprised. This isn't the old Conservative Party. This is a hardline group of right-wing ideologues and fanatics. They come from places like the sinister Calgary School. They belong to the same wacky right-wing societies. They are Canada's Republicans and they hate the Democrats as much as they hate the Liberals. Just like they despise our liberal Canadian values, and would turn us into a capitalist jungle. If they aren't stopped ....and soon .....Canada will be destroyed. If the Cons don't get us, President Obama will. Oh yeah...just in case Harper and his gang of fanatics and neocon thugs are still clinging to the hope that the Republicans will win the next election....and make them all honorary Amerikans. For stabbing Obama in the back. They should forget it. The vultures are circling over the rotting carcass of this Con government. And The Parrot has spoken...
Prrrrrrrrr... Pretty Polly.. Obama yes we CAN.
If I was Stephen Harper and his Republican Cons I'd be very very afraid......
Sometimes being a mime can be a lonely job. Just like being a blogger. Especially if you're a gay one in Canada.. So I thought I should take a timeout. And give myself a well deserved pat on the back. First of all for nailing this story. From its tawdry beginning......to its sensational climax. So I didn't have to backtrack furiously like so many other bloggers who had casually shrugged off the story. Chuff Chuff Chuff. Full steam REVERSE !!!!! I know what I'm talking about .......REALLY!!!! All I had to say was I told you so. Oh yes....and also that for me the story had NOTHING to do with what Julie Couillard looks like ....or the size of her boobs....as some bloggers seem to suggest. You can trust me with that one. I didn't even notice them. Are they REALLY that large? For me it was all about some really bad choices, during a motorcycle gang war that terrorised the city I lived in, bombs, piles of corpses, the death of a poor kid named Daniel Desrochers, some rotten judgement by a powerful but incompetent Con Minister, and of course a question of national security.
But never mind. Because I also want to claim credit for nailing another story.... or foreshadowing it. The story of the man who DIDN'T fall to earth over Saskatchewan. Or as I feared....hit a wingnut....or dig a nasty big hole in a wheat field. But seriously... how come I appear to be the ONLY person to suggest that the Big Jump seemed a little reckless and ..... um.....amateurish. Apart from his rival.
"I think if he had launched he would have seriously injured himself or gotten killed,"It's a nightmare to launch a balloon of that size.....I just look at it and think, 'This guy hasn't really thought this out.' "
Talk about being saved by the balloon. Eh?
Or for that matter how come I was the ONLY hoser to wonder why if French authorities deemed the stunt too dangerous to allow him to jump over France....why was it safe for him to jump over Saskatchewan?
Wait. Don't tell me. I think I can guess. Either I'm really brilliant. Or a lot of people are really DUM....
------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. Did any of those geniuses who thought that the Max and Julie scandal wasn't a story....check out Stephen Harper's pale shrunken face yesterday ?
It's a simple little memorial. A small concrete cube with no decorations on its sides.... so vandals can't deface them. But it sends out a powerful message.
Germany unveiled a memorial Tuesday to the long-ignored gay victims of the Nazi regime, a monument that also aims to address discrimination today by confronting visitors with an image of a same-sex couple kissing.
And reminding us that the battle continues. "This memorial is important from two points of view - to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily..." I was sad no survivors lived to see this day. Survivors who endured bestial torture and medical experiments, but were kept in jail and denied compensation by their so-called liberators.
I really wanted him to be there. Because what they did to him and his lover Jo will haunt me forever...... The loudspeakers played noisy military music as the SS men stripped him naked, and violently jammed a metal bucket over his head. They unleashed on Jo the camp's ferocious guard-dogs, German Shepherds, who began to rip at his flesh -- first his genitals, and his thighs, and then they devoured Jo before our eyes. His screams of pain were amplified and distorted by the bucket over his head. Frozen in place and trembling, wide-eyed at seeing so much horror, I had tears running down my cheeks. I prayed that he would rapidly lose consciousness...."
Shortly before he died Pierre Seel wrote this:
"When I have finish wandering, I go home. Then I light the candle that burns permanently in my kitchen when I am alone. That frail flame is my memory of Jo."
One candle for Jo. One for all the other gay victims of the holocaust that never ends.
You know... with the way some straight bigots react to the sight of two men kissing.... no wonder they buried the television screen in a bunker.
Never mind the vandals. They'll probably have to post guards to prevent the whole memorial from being destroyed.
Oh no. Poor Julie Couillard. She has sooooo much bad luck with her boyfriends. First there was the big shot Hell's Angel who ended up in a ditch with a fatal case of lead poisoning. Her next biker love, from the Hells Angel puppet club The Rockers, became a police informer. Another convicted criminal boyfriend who apparently owed money to the Hells committed suicide. Now her latest sweet heart has been cruelly busted. Finally. So much for the judgement of Stephen Harper. On Monday, Harper refused to answer whether authorities had run a security check on Couillard. "I have no intention to comment on a minister's former girlfriend," he said. "I don't take this subject seriously." Muahahaha. I bet he does now. So much for this pompous blogging ass. The Prime Minister does not always have his finger on the pulse of public sentiment. But I suspect his response today - “Mr. Dion and Mr. Duceppe are quite a group of gossipy old busy-bodies,” in particular - had more than a few Canadians nodding in agreement.
You mean like IDIOTS? Look I'm from Quebec so I don't really care who fucks who. And love is sometimes blind. But as I pointed out here and here this story was a disaster in the making.
And a Prime Minister who didn't see it coming ....or lied about what he knew...should simply resign. And take his dirty, corrupt, and incompetent Con government with him. But not before some critical questions are answered: What did Max and Julie discuss over dinner with Public Security Minister Stockwell Day...at Hy's on March 31st? What was in the documents Julie took home? And who bugged her bedroom? Or her mattress? Has our national security been breached? Has this whole government been COMPROMISED? I'm so sorry this soap opera had to end so sadly....and so suddenly. But with a full police investigation AND an extensive public inquiry.... The Epilogue should be even BETTER...
I see the former French paratrooper who plans to jump from a balloon forty kilometres over Saskatchewan has postponed his first attempt. And I'm not sure whether to be disappointed ..... or RELIEVED. Because something about this story bothers me. I admire the old guy for his guts and for sacrificing everything for a 20-year dream.
And I know how great the feeling of free falling through the air can be...even if Sébastien has to kick me in the butt to get me to jump.
But Michel Fournier is sixty-four, has had a triple bypass, is planning to jump from a height three times higher than he ever has before, and reach a speed almost twice as fast as the great Joe Kittinger. A speed where you could burn, as well as freeze, or have your blood boil. And if French authorities decided the project was too dangerous to allow him to jump over France...who decided it was safe enough for him to jump over Saskatchewan? Just wondering. Oh well. I hope the old guy makes it.
That his dream comes true at last. And that his watch doesn't stop.
So he gets to see our world rushing towards him like the great Joe Kittinger did. Whose bravery has always thrilled me. And who said this week: It was nice to be headed back to earth, because it’s an environment that we can live in... And it’s a beautiful planet, really....”
Really...
Oh well....at least he won't need a surfboard in Saskatchewan.
I see the the Bouchard-Taylor Commission has finally released its report. And although the Commission has been a debacle right from the start, I think the final product is pretty good. Which is a relief. Because I was really worried when I saw a leaked version of the report, and it seemed to suggest that the solution to the nonexistent problem...was that the first white people to live in Quebec should call themselves Québécois of French Canadian origin instead of just Québécois. And I knew that some in the province were already comparing that to the moronic sayings of The King of Kings..... Elvis Gratton.
He's a wellknown movie and television character in Quebec. A comic caricature of a vulgar, ignorant, federalist French Canadian who dreams of being a big shot Elvis impersonator.
In short.... the kind of Québécois who makes the rest of the old stock Frenchies shudder.
Especially when in a famous scene he is on a plane with his wife. And a Frenchman from France asks them if they are Canadian.
Here's the scene with my translation underneath...
PASSENGER: Are you Canadians ? You have the accent... ELVIS: Me I'm a Canadian Québécois.... a French French Canadian....an American of the French North...a francophone Québécois Canadian....a Québécois of French Canadian French expression. We are the Canadian American francophones of North America...the FrancoQuébécois.... WIFE: We are the Franco Canadians of Quebec, the Québécois Canadians. That's it....
You see what I mean? Throw Elvis into this identity question and it could be DEVASTATING.
But now I'm not worried anymore. As one of my separatist friends said today: "I'd much rather be a Québécois of French Canadian background, than an old stock Québécois." And he wasn't the only one.
Many English Canadians believe that Quebecers are racists. But I should have known better. How lucky I am to belong to the great French Nation in Canada. Still the most progressive province in the country.
How proud I am to be a Québécois of half Scottish from Scotland....half English from England origin ...of anglophone AND francophone expression... AND a proud Canadian.
Only in Canada eh? Or Belgium... Oh yeah. Quebec is moving on.
And Elvis has left the building... ----------------------------------------------------------- P.S. Guess where I'm going this weekend? I leave you with this great old song by Robert Charlebois... to help explain how far we've come. And why I love the place and the habitants so much...
Oh sure. Endings are sometimes rough. But new beginnings are WONDERFUL. Have a great weekend everyone !!
