Over at The Toronto Star, they’re running a collection of reader-submitted stories about little kind acts that local have done for their fellow human beings.
Even now, the Sesame Street skit shown below (click to view the skit) is one of my all-time favourites:
The “Yup Yup” aliens meet a phone. Click to see the video.
“Mr. Neutron” has posted a photo-how-to showing you how to make your own “Yup Yup” aliens for your own backyard puppet shows. Keep it handy for the next time you’re itching to do a little arts and crafts work:
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Vote Robot Nixon! [Updated]
As long as I’m on the topic of recontextualized images of U.S. presidents, here’s a “Vote Robot Nixon” poster courtesy of strk3:
It turns out that you can buy the poster!
(If the “Robot Nixon” reference flew over your head, it’s from this episode of Futurama.)
George W. Bush’s Face Rides Again!
Hot on the heels of simplyaudiobooks.ca’s billboard featuring a picture of George W. Bush beside the headline Don’t Read Enough?…
Photo by Hamish Grant.
…comes another ad disparaging the Shrub’s cognitive capabilities — Yale Shmale:
Where the Campaign Hits
Playing on Bush’s perceived mental midgetry — for which there is ample evidence — is like shooting fish in a barrel as far as the university-bound crowd goes.
“Graduating from an Ivy League university doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart,” reads the copy on the site whose message is that going to a prestigious university is no guarantee that you’re going to come out as a brilliant person. And on that part, they’re right: despite having gone to the character-building Yale for his undergrad, he somehow ended up becoming a boozehound and cokehead. As for his much-vaunted degree from Harvard Business School, there’s the matter of investors in his businesses losing 55 cents for every dollar they invested in him; in fact, his businesses were so lossy that they made pretty good tax shelters. Bush’s major business success — the Arlington Ballpark, home of the Texas Rangers — was largely tax-subsidized.
Where the Campaign Misses
What diminishes the Yale Shmale site’s impact is the set of promotions at the bottom of the page. One is a contest for a Smart Car, the other is for a PlayStation Portable. It makes the place appear second- or third-rate, and given how much smaller the differential in tuitions between the least and most prestigious schools in Canada is, it seems cheap. A promo like this is suitable for a jeans store, not a university. I’m reminded of the college that Mallory, the dumb sister from the 1980s sitcom Family Ties went to; if you enrolled, you were entitled to a “nice thick juicy steak cooked just the way you like it.”
Come November 2008, Bush could make a decent living as a self-deprecating product pitchman. At least it’s an honest living.
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Travel Diary, Part 2
(If you missed Part 1, it’s here.)
Volunteers
1:09 p.m.: An announcement comes over the public address system: the plane is too heavily loaded with luggage. They’re asking for three volunteers to take a later flight.
“Unless we get three Good Samaritans to volunteer not to board this flight but take the next one, this plane will not be able to take off,” the announcer says. “We will provide a travel voucher of two hundred dollars U.S. to the three who stay behind.
I was planning to enjoy a six-hour wait in Newark, whose Terminal C has considerably more amenities than Toronto’s Terminal 3. I was even thinking of getting a one-day pass and hanging out in the Continental Presidents Club. However, getting a two hundred dollar voucher and hanging out at the rather “ghetto” Terminal 3 was probably a better move than spending money at the shopping mall-like Terminal C.
I went to the desk and asked for details about the next flight to Newark. If I took that flight, I would still have almost three hours to catch the connecting flight to Belfast. The weather in Newark was good, so there was little chance of the flight being delayed.
“Okay then,” I said, “I volunteer.”
1:15 p.m.: Nobody whose final destination is Newark volunteers. It’s me and two other people, both of whom have missed their connections. One of them has brought a pillow with her; she’s been at the airport for about seven hours already. All she wants to do is get back to Little Rock.
2:10 p.m.: Once the plane takes off, we gather around the counter to collect our reward for being considerate travellers. We let Little Rock go first, since she’s been here the longest. It doesn’t go well: it turns out that since she’s travelled on reward miles, she’s not eligible for a voucher. She looks as though she’s about to cry.
“Oh, come on,” I say, “that’s not fair. Regulations or no, she just did you a big favour.”
2:30 p.m.: They shoo me away from the counter, and after about ten minutes of discussion and much hand-waving later, she leaves with a travel voucher. The next guy spends ten minutes at the counter, and then it’s my turn.
“Here you go, sir,” says the woman behind the counter. “One hundred dollars.”
“Excuse me, but didn’t you offer two hundred dollars?”
She pauses pause and gives me a look of exasperation, and then switches to “I hold all the cards, and you’re going to take what I’m giving you” mode.
“The regulations specifically state that we can offer one hundred dollars,” she says curtly.
“But when you made the announcement, you offered two hundred. You’re pulling a bait-and-switch on me,” I reply. I like to think of myself as an easy-going guy, but I’m not about to get jerked around by an airline after doing them a favour.
I pull out a pen and start writing the name on the counter person’s nametag on my boarding pass envelope. “We can settle this here, or I can give Continental a call, maybe with the two other people who volunteered. I’m sure they’ll remember how much you offered over the P.A….”
Another counter agent, having witnessed the whole thing, steps in.
“I can print out another voucher for you, sir,” she says, “for a total of two hundred, if you could have a seat. I’ll bring it to you.”
“That would be acceptable,” I say. I take a seat near the counter. Five minutes later, she presents me with another voucher and is careful to show me that the serial numbers of both my vouchers are different. After the near bait-and-switch, I appreciate this demonstration of good faith.
A slight dramatization of what happened at the counter, denki anma style.
Next: A little trouble at Newark.
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It Sounds Like Liberal Whining
You get three guesses as to where the article titled Power of the Pen and subtitled with “The president uses signing statements to decree which laws apply to him” comes from. Here’s the article’s penultimate paragraph:
Americans may have to wait many years to learn what the rule of law meant in 2006. The truth may be suppressed until Bush’s aides begin publishing their memoirs or until the Supreme Court has a change of mood and decides that the executive branch is not entitled to boundless secrecy. In the meantime, don’t count on the legislative branch to right the balance: Bush has encountered almost no effective resistance in his own party to his power grabs. One Republican senator recently told author Elizabeth Drew: “We’ve got to hang with the president because if you start splitting with him or say the president has been abusing power we’ll all go down.” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently denounced criticism of the NSA warrantless wiretapping as “insulting” to the president, Drew reported. Apparently, some prominent Republicans believe that the president cannot be criticized even after he admits breaking the law.
On which leftist site did this appear? Mother Jones? Daily Kos? The Huffington Post?
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Back from Northern Ireland
It was a whirlwind trip — I landed in Belfast International Airport at about 9:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday and departed on Thursday at 11:40 a.m., but I do make it a point not to miss big family events like weddings or opportunities for travel to countries I’ve never been to.
Here are the first two photos I’ve ever shot in Northern Ireland. The first is the view looking out onto the North Channel from Coast Road in Balleygally, about 45 kilometres (30-ish miles) north of Belfast:
(For the geographically curious, this map will give you an idea of the relative locations of Belfast and Balleygally.)
The photo above was taken immediately across the street from where I stayed, the Ballygally Castle Hotel. It’s a three-star hotel, and it came by those three stars honestly:
More postings about the trip, including the continuation of my travel diary, will follow.