The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

The philosophy about women and girls in Saudi Arabia can be pretty much summed up as “10,000 BC” or, if you’re historically challenged, “Chicks ruin everything”. The latest evidence for this came up when the Swedish publication Metro (who publish their free paper across the globe) posted comparisons of the Swedish IKEA catalog, shown below…

…and the Saudi Arabian edition, shown below:

Not unlike a programmer meetup, come to think of it.
Except that there’s actual hygiene happening here.

The women in Saudi Arabia’s Ikea catalogs have all gone missing. Not just the women modelling with the furniture and home and office goods, but even the the female designer of Ikea’s cheap-and-cheerful “PS” line of furniture and sundry home items.

As of this writing, it’s still unclear where the decision to make a special “No Girls Allowed” edition came from. Ikea HQ in Sweden, may have figured that the extra expense and participating in Saudi Arabia’s gender apartheid was worth those sweet, sweet petro-bucks, or it may have been the Saudi Arabian franchise who made the call.

Ikea has released a standard-issue “statement expessing regret”. According to AP News, they said:

“We should have reacted and realized that excluding women from the Saudi Arabian version of the catalogue is in conflict with the Ikea Group values.”

AP News also quotes Sweden’s Equality Minister Nyamko Sabuni, who said:

“For Ikea to remove an important part of Sweden’s image and an important part of its values in a country that more than any other needs to know about about Ikea’s principles and values – that’s completely wrong.”

Metro has this quote from Swedish Trade Minister Ewa Björling:

“It’s impossible to retouch women out of reality. These images are yet another regrettable example that shows we have a long road ahead when it comes to gender equality in Saudi Arabia.”

These sorts of Saudi shenanigans shouldn’t surprise anyone. Consider the Saudi edition of the Starbucks logo…

…or the fact that women aren’t allowed to drive there. The ban was unofficial and only turned into an actual law in 1990 when a convoy of 47 women defiantly drove cars through the capital. In a bit of Flintstones-meets-Jetsons strangeness, women are allowed to fly planes — they’re just not allowed to drive to the airport. Women pilots are chauffeured there. For the curious, Wikipedia has a quick summary of Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia, and it ain’t pretty.

She looks oddly like Overly Attached Girlfriend of Reddit fame.

At the start of September, after a trip through Quebec with the Lady Friend, my summer vacation ended and I went back to work. And then September vanished, seemingly in the blink of an eye. Which means, among other things, Oktoberfest! It’s already well under way…

I’m an enhusiastic supporter of beer-related events…

…and if the beer-related event also features a little decolletage on the side, so much the better!

Whoo, beer!

More beer!

More decolletage!

Okay, maybe a little too much beer.

Taking a little break.

And for good measure, beer and decolletage.

Immediately after Oktoberfest, which runs until the first weekend in October, comes Canadian Thanksgiving:

Canadian celebrities pictured from left to right: Ryan Gosling, Kim Cattrall, “The Biebs”, Ryan Reynolds, Ellen Page, Drake and “Robin Sparkles”.

And on October 28th, comes Bill Gates’ birthday…

…and finally, Hallowe’en!

(This guy’s costumes, which you can see here, are quite good. I may have to steal his “Shining” idea.)

Happy October, everybody!

It was, ahem, bound to happen.

The existence of the Fifty Shades magazine should make you feel disappointed for bored housewives, literature and the human race, but you shouldn’t be surprised. There was an opportunity, and someone was enterprising enough to cash in on it. In this case, “someone” was Topix Media Lab, a highfalutin’ name for a lowfalutin’ business: they specialize in single-topic magazines that focus on the hot topic of the moment. I haven’t read the magazine, but Lois Alter Mark did, and she’s sharing 25 things she learned from it.

(I’ll admit that I plan to name my next band “Sexy Scavenger Hunt”.)

Comic by Jen Sorensen.
Click to read the accompanying article.

Comic by Kevin Siers.

Comic by Steve Greenberg.

Comic by Pat Bagley.

Graph by Jay Livingston.
Click the graph to see the accompanying article.

A phalanx of nine cops should be able to take on a single guy — until that guy is the Filipino Jedi.

(Pulis is Tagalog for “police”.)

Michael O’Hare, probably best known amongst geeks including Yours Truly as “Commander Jeffrey Sinclair” and later “Valen” from the 1990s sci-fi TV series Babylon 5, passed away yesterday. In addition to being on the underappreciated Babylon 5, he had other notable roles in the original stage version of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men and one of the best obscure film references in The Simpsons: C.H.U.D..

He’s now, as they said on the show, “out beyond the rim.” Requiescat in pace.

In his memory, a classic “Sinclair” moment from Babylon 5. Gotta love that very 1990s look the reporter’s sporting:

If you’ve ever gone clubbing on King Street West, you already know this.

The Japanese sure can make some oddball videogames. Pictured above is a scene from one such game, Tokyo Jungle, a survival game in which some catastrophe has killed all the people on Earth, leaving the animals to run wild all over. The game is set in Tokyo, and you play the part of various animals trying to survive in the (now literal) urban jungle.

Anyhow, if you’re going out to Nuit Blanche tonight in the hopes of meeting someone (I gained a fan club at one Nuit Blanche for all the good it did me — I was married at the time), keep the lesson from the screen above in mind.

This is actually a good metaphor for the corporate politics at Microsoft.

My favourite description of  Tokyo Jungle comes from this article in Eurogamer: “It’s basically Grand Theft Auto with lions.”

This one’s a great metaphor for what it’s like to work at RIM right now.

In that article, the reviewer also called it “a celebration of classic games, with their ridiculous plots, repetitive tasks, excessive violence and all. It pulls off the impressive and nigh-on impossible trick of being an original homage. Also it lets you set a giraffe on a bear.”

If I had a PlayStation 3, I’d be getting in on some of that hot giraffe-on-bear action.