What's with the Globe and Mail's letters page?

This must be one of the most annoying pages on the Internet -- and, mysteriously, it has survived several redesigns.

It's the Globe and Mail's letters to the editor page. When I pick up the print edition, it's the first place I turn. I'm not sure why -- habit probably. The letters used to be witty and incisive. Sometimes they still are, though not often enough.

But online? The page is a mess. 

The letters are grouped by subject. Usually. (Yesterday, the letters in response to Margaret Wente's claim that Canada was, in fact, "un pays de sauvages" before Europeans arrived took up most of the page, but were not all grouped together.)

For each letter, we see the name of the writer, and some text. Like this:

Nameless white crosses 
Judith Tanguay

Your front-page photo depicting the nameless white crosses that mark final resting places at Alberta's Wabasca Cemetery (Hunt Begins For Long-Missing Students - Oct. 27) sadly perpetuates a belief that this was unique to native children who attended residential schools. I recently visited a small Protestant cemetery in Hearst, Ont., that was established in the early 1900s. Of the 505 graves, 114 are anonymous and countless others unmarked.

Click the name of the letter-writer, and the rest of the letter appears.

Then there are letters like this one:

Victim of eco-bullying? 
Karen Shein 

Re Don't Carry A Cloth Lunch Bag To Work? Tsk, Tsk (Life, Oct 27): If an employee is going to act like a whiny and egocentric preschooler who does not yet understand that we all need to do our part to take care of the environment we all share, then it necessitates their being treated as such.

Click the name of the letter-writer and you see... the same letter again. The site doesn't distinguish between which letters are shown in their entirety, and which represent only the first paragraph.

In order to ensure that you catch each and every bon mot from the Globe's letter-writers, you have to click each and every one of their names. Which is ridiculous, of course.

Career move hall of fame

Constable Shaylene Paul was all set to start her first job with the RCMP. She'd be working out of the small-town detachment in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia.

So what does she do, four days before starting? Gets behind the wheel with too much alcohol in her system. Now she's pleaded guilty to impaired driving, has been fined, and has lost her licence for a year -- which should make it kind of hard to drive the cruiser, if she does ever get to start that job.

Nonsensical pricing policy

If I'm online, and I want to see the image of a cheque that has cleared on my account, I have to pay $1.50 for the privilege. Because I'm bad at writing down what cheques I've written to whom, I often wind up staring at the screen and thinking something like, "$203.18? For what?"

If I were to switch to paperless accounting, it would be free to view the cheque. But I don't want to go paperless. It doesn't save paper. It just means I have to remember to print my own statements and file them with my financial statements. Paperless means the bank saves on paper.

So what do I do if I'm a cheapskate and don't want to pay the $1.50? I call the bank. A friendly teller (this is Nova Scotia, remember) will then take time she could be spending serving a customer in the branch to look it up for me, and tell me -- free of charge -- to whom the cheque was made out.

I use far more of the bank's resources, and the bank lets me do it for free. Does this make any sense?

Why doesn't God just create more oil?

Where to start with this?

Rocky Twyman has a radical solution for surging gasoline prices: prayer.

Twyman - a community organizer, church choir director and public relations consultant from the Washington, D.C., suburbs - staged a pray-in at a San Francisco Chevron station on Friday, asking God for cheaper gas. He did the same thing in the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, with volunteers from a soup kitchen joining in. Today he will lead members of an Oakland church in prayer.

Yes, it's come to that.

"God is the only one we can turn to at this point," said Twyman, 59. "Our leaders don't seem to be able to do anything about it. The prices keep soaring and soaring."

Anything for a Toronto angle.

This story is downright weird.

...tonight the NHL will hand out its hardware.

And when Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals climbs onto the stage at the Elgin Theatre in downtown Toronto to accept the Hart Memorial Trophy, another season will have passed since Ted (Teeder) Kennedy became the last Maple Leaf, 53 years ago, to receive the trophy, awarded to the player deemed most valuable to his NHL team.

Not only that -- and here's a scoop for you, so pay attention -- but another whole year will have passed since anyone won the trophy.

Worst cutesy church sign so far

The local Anglican church is in a lovely old building, surrounded by a graveyard, and with the ocean nearby.

Unfortunately, they also have a sign on which they not only place times of worship, but also those cutesy slogans mainline Protestant churches seem so enamoured of. You know the kind: "What's missing in this ch__ch?"(answer: "u r"). There's actually a great post on the subject of these types of signs on the Church Marketing Sucks blog.

I am not a church-goer, so I read the signs with a vague, idle interest. But one a few weeks ago almost had me hitting the brakes as I drove by. It said, "Jesus is my Prozac." The local Anglicans are clearly not the first church to have thought up this gem, but that doesn't excuse its sheer awfulness.

Where to begin?

I can't really think of a more limp, milquetoast, bland approach to religion than to compare Jesus to Prozac. Is the Anglican church a happy pill? Did Jesus die on the cross to relieve our symptoms of depression? Do depressed people need church to pick them up? Are people who take Prozac being made to feel they are inadequate, and they should be in church instead? Will quitting the church potentially make you suicidal?

It's an awful, awful analogy.

If this is the best the Anglicans and their like can offer, no wonder the fundamentalist churches are booming.

Sparing the children

The Halifax Regional School Board uses a ridiculous computer filtering system -- one that blocks so many sites that teachers have a hard time finding sites their students can use. (Another absurdity is that exactly the same filters apply for all grades. What's unsafe for Grade 1 is unsafe for Grade 12, apparently.)

One of my kids, for example, says his teacher recommended a science site, but the filtering software won't let students access it. It's classified as "gaming." An unintended result is that the high school kids are learning more about computer science, as they access the forbidden sites they need to do their schoolwork through anonymizers and proxy servers.

Of course there are some sites that are so evil children must be protected from them. This one, for instance -- yes, the good old Muddy Hill Post. Try to access it from a computer within the Halifax Regional School Board and you will see this message: "Access denied. This site has been categorized as occult."

The company that provides the filtering software claims to offer the "most advanced proprietary global filtering and categorization service." That must explain why -- in addition to dangerous blogs that offer commentary on freelance writing, Halifax and Nova Scotia news, music and other satanic topics -- they also block access to certain government web sites, teen health sites, dangerous publications like Harper's and the Village Voice, and anything that will let you check your email. And don't even begin to think about researching a paper on the Second World War. Because Hitler, you know, was anti-Semitic. So sites referring to him are a no-no, apparently.

I wonder if the folks behind this software really think living in a CNN world with other viewpoints considered too extreme for young minds will make for a better society.

The most annoying cliché strikes again

According to the Globe and Mail, the today's Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is "not your grandmother's CIBC."

Considering that one of my grandmothers lived much of her life on a mountainside in Greece with no electricity, I'd say the headline writers are correct: it's not her CIBC.

Not your mother's, or your aunt's

Of all the journalistic clichés -- hell, of all the writing clichés -- one of the worst has to be the one that snidely refers to your parents, or aunt. It's typically an aunt (and only occasionally an uncle -- usually when he borderline fondles you at family get-togethers).

You know what I'm talking about.

• The MVP TV series is "not your mother's CBC."
• Thinking of going south for a holiday? It's "not your mother's Florida" anymore.
• Hitting the hills? It's "not your father's skiing" now.
• Businesses need to recognize that their customers are "not your father's customers."

As for the aunts, Gertrude is in for a particularly rough time (especially when it comes to those mythical sweaters she doles out as Christmas presents).

• Aunt Gertrude's memory problems make her unreliable.
• Google Reader's share feature could allow her to see what blog posts you're reading.
  
• At holiday dinners, she wants to talk about her digestive system.
  

We own a cookbook that has a recipe called "Not your mother's green beans." My partner looked at the recipe. "These are my mother's green beans," she said. A local bar advertises that "Your father never rocked like this." Given their target demographic, there are probably decent odds their customers' fathers rocked a hell of a lot harder.

This is lazy, lazy writing. And worse, it's offensive writing too. It makes assumptions about the readers, which is generally a poor technique because it alienates them. It also seems to assume that all family members are stuck in a cliché of 1950s family life, and that everybody (except of course these hip not-your-parent places) conforms to some -- again, mythical -- notion of bland mainstream life and entertainment.

And Aunt Gertrude? Not too many of us have an aunt Gertrude. The name's popularity peaked in the 1890s, when it was the 24th most popular girl's name in America. It went into a steep decline after that, ranking 939th in the 1960s, and dropping out of the top 1,000 names altogether after that.

Is there an editor in the house?

Today's Globe and Mail offers a "Video Pick" saying fans of Tintin are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tintin creator Hergé's birth. (The copy calls him Herge -- because apparently there are no accents available to G&M Web editors.)

I almost never click on these things, but today I did.

And I got to see a report on how the Tintin books no longer have an Arabic publisher, so fans in Egypt, where the books are popular, have to read them in French. There was also the usual discussion of whether or not the books are racist. (Conclusion: maybe.)

Santa probably trains his staff better

Empire Theatres in Halifax have a great idea to bring more people into a downtown cinema on Sunday afternoon. It goes by the cloying name of Santa Cinema: a different Christmas-themed movie every Sunday at 3PM.

So we head down to the cinema to see Miracle on 34th Street. We hoped it would be the original, but it turned out to be the remake.

There's a poster at the theatre entrance stating the adult and child prices of tickets to the Christmas movies. It also says admission includes popcorn and a drink.

There's nobody at the box office when we arrive -- promising -- but a kid turns up soon after. We ask for two adult, one youth, and two child tickets. There are no youth tickets anymore he says. I ask what age child covers. He says there are no child tickets any more, just adult tickets (Merry Christmas kiddies!). I point out that the poster at the front of the theatre gives a price for child tickets. He says OK. I ask what age child goes up to (we have a 13-year-old -- will he be a child or an adult?). He says, "three to seven, I guess."

He then sells us our tickets. I ask about the included concessions. He doesn't know anything about that and calls off-screen (I was starting to feel like I was in a bad movie myself" to Ian, the manager. He turns up, says, "Do you know how to sell Santa Cinema tickets?" The kid and I both say "No" at the same time, and the manager proceeds to train him on the spot, as the line behind us gets longer.

"Three to seven I guess." I loved that. If you don't know the answer, make it up, in as unconvincing a way as possible.

After the show was over -- yes, it was the remake, but it was fun -- the kids decide to hit the arcade. The change machine would not accept the paper money it was supposed to. The "In the Groove" dance game was broken. The claw ate the tokens put into it. The air hockey jets were so weak that the puck kept getting stuck mid-table.

All this to the soundtrack of a broken machine, endlessly repeating (in a sing-song): "Prize error, prize error, please call attendant.... Prize error, prize error, please call attendant..."

C'est une question de feeling

For some reason, public figures in Halifax are flagellating the media and citizens for the cancellation of the Céline Dion concert originally scheduled for August 23.

I am truly baffled.

Here is the story. The city was negotiating to bring a major act to the Halifax Common. On the eve of a major announcement, the Céline people jumped the gun and posted an August 23 Halifax date online. So they announced the concert prior to its official announcement.

Haligonians were not, ahem, unanimous in rushing to greet Céline. A couple of days later, René Angelil, Céline's husband and manager, said they were pulling out of the Halifax date. He elaborated in a phone call, saying, ""There’s no business decision, it’s a question of feeling." Apparently people said nasty things about his wife on phone-in shows and Web forums (can you imagine?) So he cancelled.

As a result, people in Halifax have been beating themselves up for being bush league.

Are they nuts? We are talking about one of the top-selling female artists of all time (how that happened is beyond me) and she -- or rather, her husband, because he says Céline has not seen any of the criticism, since it is his job to protect her from it -- can't take barbs from radio phone-in shows and Web forums? Oh, and from a columnist from the Halifax Daily News, who spent most of his column welcoming the show, but made the dreadful mistake of being critical in his opening paragraph.

Instead of chastising us for making it difficult to bring future acts to Halifax, the city ought to be talking lawsuit against Angelil.

All of this has had one positive effect. David Rodehniser, the columnist who scared the pants off Angelil, has produced a hilarious column today.

Hooray! Ozzy Osbourne is apparently coming to Halifax next January. This will be the best concert in the city's history - equalled only by all the previous concerts in Halifax's history, which were all equally amazing in their own unique and artistically diverse ways.

Just in case Sharon Osbourne is clipping newspapers from around the globe to see what people are writing about Ozzy, I want the record to show that I fully, 110 per cent, endorse this concert. It should definitely go ahead and local fans will certainly buy out every seat.

The Halifax Metro Centre is the perfect venue for Ozzy to play, although if he changes his mind and wants to rock the Halifax Common, there is no doubt that his fans would stand outside in a raging snowstorm to see him perform. He could call it the Blizzard of Ozz, like his quadruple-platinum 1980 album, which yielded such classics as the blistering Crazy Train and the heartfelt ballad Goodbye to Romance.

Read the rest of it here.

Lame, lame lame

Halifax has been abuzz. A big concert is going to be announced for the Halifax Common next summer. A couple of years ago it was the Rolling Stones, and now various names were being tossed around: U2, the Eagles, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers.

You can see the trend here: big names, past their prime, but top-of-the-line in terms of of draw (and ticket prices).

So who are we getting? Well, early reports are indicating it will be... Celine Dion. Please. Can this town get any lamer?

Not entirely idiotic

Just when I was all set to post something about how the Nova Scotia government seems to have been taken over entirely by idiots, they go and do something truly praiseworthy and forward-looking.

But first, the idiocy.

1) It starts with the premier. Rodney MacDonald waits, and waits, and waits before calling the legislature back into session. Last year it sat for the fewest days in its history. This year it will sit for even fewer. Finally, the announcement comes that former cabinet minister Ernie Fage -- who was already embroiled in scandal before allegedly being involved in a hit-and-run from which he fled -- will be going to trial November 16 and 17. (Read my previous posting on the Fage saga here.) Now that we've got a trial date, MacDonald announces the legislature will reopen on November 22. How convenient -- no embarrassing questions to answer during the trial. MacDonald, of course, says there is no connection between the two dates.

2) It continues with the premier. On a tour to sell his government's proposed anti-strike legislation for health-care workers, he tells an audience that the workers have told him they want the government to take away their right to strike. Uh-huh.

3) And how about that minister of health promotion, Barry Barnet? As he's launching a strategy to get people to drink less, his colleague, environment and labour minister Mark Parent, is introducing rules loosening up alcohol advertising. Hey kids! Dollar shots at the Dome! Barnet seems taken by surprise by the announcement of the new rules in early fall. But apparently he doesn't do much else -- until he is surprised once again when the first ads actually launch.

4) And how about that education minister, Karen Casey? First, she fires the entire board of the Halifax Regional School Board. Then she threatens to bring the members of the Strait Regional School Board in line for their bickering. But she also reaffirms her commitment to democracy. It's just that the boards should stop squabbling. So.... democracy is good -- as long as you don't argue.

So what have this gang done right lately? Protection of the Blue Mountain - Birch Cove Lakes area, which would otherwise tumble to sprawl.

From a CPAWS news release:

The Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness Area will become one of Canada’s largest urban wilderness parks. It is located just west of Halifax near the Bayers Lake Industrial Park, adjacent to some of the fastest growing areas of the city, including Rockingham, Clayton Park West, and Timberlea, as well as the future Bedford West development.

...Blue Mountain – Birch Cove Lakes is ecologically-significant, containing over a dozen undeveloped lakes, numerous wetlands, old forest, rare plants, the highest point of land on the Chebucto Peninsula, and habitat for a small population of endangered mainland moose. It also boasts numerous recreational opportunities, including wilderness hiking and the only canoe loop near the city where nine lakes can be paddled without backtracking.

Yak: Great prices, sucky service

Well over a month ago, my long-distance stopped working. When I called my carrier, Yak, they told me it was because I had switched to a competitor. No, I said, I haven't. They gave me a number to call to confirm my long distance carrier. I called: "Your long distance carrier is Yak."

Back to Yak. Turns out they'd cut me off because my credit card had expired, and they'd never bothered to ask me for the new expiry date. I gave them the new card number. It was declined. I called the bank and confirmed there was nothing wrong with the card. Not only that, the bank guy said that when a transaction is attempted and declined, it shows up in their system. There was no transaction showing -- meaning the Yak person hadn't run the transaction properly. I was shocked to hear this, considering I'd had to repeat the card number three times for her, slower each time, and trying to remain polite as she hesitantly repeated the numbers back to me, with varying degrees of accuracy.

I tried emailing Yak. Ha! No acknowledgment of receipt. I figured it went into the vast junk bin where all those "info@" emails go.

Eventually, I got my long-distance running again (I was using a phone card in the meantime), after confirming that I wanted to "switch back" to Yak. (At this point it seemed hopeless to try to explain I'd never switched away.) I was told it would take 5 business days. A week later, still no long distance. When I tried to make a call, I got taken to the music you hear when you are on hold at Yak. I called customer service. I was told the problem was that I had not informed my previous long distance carrier I wanted to switch away from them. There was no previous carrier, but never mind. I was on the phone with perhaps the one competent person at Yak customer service. She actually opened my file and realized the company was still blocking my access because of the old, expired credit card. Voila.

It was all just a bad memory. Until yesterday, when I received an email -- twice -- from Yak customer service. Apparently the automated response to emails sent to the black hole of "info@" kicks in after a month or so. Here is what it said (italics in original, my commentary in bold):

We apologize for the lengthy delay of answering your customer request. Due to the overwhelming popularity of our recently added yak products & services, we have been inundated with email and telephone inquiries. (Translation: we do not have enough customer service reps. We are apologizing, but we don't feel bad enough to actually do anything about it -- like hire more people. Plus: "delay of answering"? Huh?)

If you still have an outstanding customer service issue, please accept our apologies and contact us by dialing toll-free to 1-877-445-0835 or resend your original request to info@yak.ca. (We have ignored your original request. If you would like the illusion that there is a faint hope your problem will be solved, send it to us again. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!)

We appreciate your enduring patience during this exciting time.

That last line really got me. "Enduring patience" is probably more apt than they realize. But "exciting time"? Exciting for whom? I tell ya, I am filled with excitement waiting for them to actually solve the problem they caused. And I am sure the poor souls in their call centre are brimming with excitement trying to do the work for which they have clearly not been trained.

Why I hate Purolator

Here's how FedEx works. When someone sends me a package with FedEx, the company's local driver comes to my house to deliver it. It used to be that if I wasn't home, they would call me to see if I would be around soon so they could drop it off. If I wasn't, they would come back the next day. (Now the way it works is they leave it in a pre-arranged spot whether I'm home or not.) When I want to send something via FedEx, I call them and they come pick it up. Or I take it to the local drop, and they pick it up from there.

Here is how Purolator works. They come to my house with a package. If I'm not home, they don't try to deliver it again. Instead, they leave a note saying the package is available for pickup at their local agent. Is their local agent the post office? You know, an outlet of Canada Post, which actually owns Purolator and has convenient hours, like opening at 8 AM?

No, their agent is a local business that sells wine and beer-making supplies and bottled water, and offers dry cleaning and a Sears pickup service. They open at 10 AM most days.

I take the note off my door, and naively head down to the local agent to pick up my package. "Oh no, it won't be here today. He'll drop it off when he comes back tomorrow." Because they only open at 10, of course, if you have a job in the city or somewhere else to be that takes you out of the community earlier in the morning, you are screwed.

How about using Purolator to send packages? 1) Go to the post office (a branch of the corporation that owns Purolator, remember). 2) Hand over the package. 3) Be told that Purolator won't deliver to that address. 4) Listen to suggestion that maybe the UPS store or the local weird little bottled-water-and-whatever store might know if there's a way to get Purolator to deliver that address ("They really don't tell us anything about Purolator") and 5) Send package using another company before 6) Remembering to ask clients to please use FedEx instead.

Iraq looting

One of the wonderful things about the slow death of the newspaper firewall era (in which you needed a subscription to access "premium content") is that Robert Fisk's reporting for the Independent is now freely available.

Remember the orgy of looting that broke out after the US invasion of Iraq? How there were troops protecting the Ministry of Oil and little else? (There is an excellent chapter on this whole episode in Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book Imperial Life in the Emerald City.)

Well, the looting never stopped. In fact, the looters just took over. Read Fisk and weep.

The price of being an early adopter

Apple has dropped the price of the iPhone by $200. People who bought it when they first came out are upset. Apple is apologizing and offering them a $100 credit (what can you buy at an Apple store for $100?).

From the CBC new website:

The apology and rebate came after Jobs said he received hundreds of letters from customers upset at having purchased the mobile device for $599 US only to see the price drop to $399 US this week.

What are these doofuses who complained thinking? You want to be the first to buy a hot product, you pay top dollar. Maybe I should get my dad after the folks who sold him an $800 VCR in the early 80s.

Is it better to be racist than homophobic?

Now here's a guy who deserves to be re-elected:

(Tampa, Florida) State Rep. Bob Allen (R), a longtime foe of LGBT rights in Florida, has a bizarre excuse for being charged with offering a male cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at a park.

He was busted last month in a sting at Veteran's Memorial Park in Titusville, Florida. (story)

In taped statements made by Allen to police following his arrest and released by the force Allen admits to soliciting the male officer but claims that it was the result of being nervous by the high number of black men in the park.

That dastardly media

From Maisonneuve magazine's MediaScout, on George Jonas's National Post commentary on the Conrad Black trial:

Then he launches into the serious part of his commentary, calling the prosecution a “sorry lot” whose “dubious evidence … rested on the slender foundation of browbeaten government witnesses butting their beaten brows against documentary evidence.” Wow. Not even a half-hearted attempt at journalistic objectivity to be found there.

Why does MediaScout expect George Jonas's commentary in the Post to display any journalistic objectivity? Has this person ever read George Jonas before? Does he or she know what a commentary is?

Cry me a river dept.

People who spend tens of thousands of dollars on lavish "outdoor rooms" realize there's a reason we have houses.

The local pigeons also appreciated the improvements and began roosting over — and fouling — the deck, forcing Chapman to fight back with a pellet gun and spikes. Other problems developed, including desert dust baking onto the outdoor furniture. Chapman says taking care of the yard has become pure drudgery — especially in the 110-degree heat. “It’s more work than the indoors,” he says.

From a story by June Fletcher, originally appearing in the Wall Street Journal.

Link.

Quick hits

Maybe I'm especially cranky this morning. I don't know.

• Canada launches its very own no-fly list today. See? We can play with the big boys too! Our list is part of something called the Passenger Protect Program. I will leave aside the basic stupidity of lists like this. Instead, I want to say, Passenger Protect? Is there something wrong with the word protection?
  
• What's with Paul Wells and Andrew Potter's blogs lately? Why do they (or Maclean's) think we're more interested in French politics than, say, Canadian politics?
  
• The local elementary school has a breakfast program. It's great. I help out occasionally (though probably not often enough). I received a nice certificate for my efforts, from the national Breakfast for Learning program, whose slogan is "Eat Right! Be Bright!" A good breakfast is an important part of the school day. But I would think good English just might be too. And "eat right" ain't it.
• CBC wants you to submit your videos! So they can air them! And not pay you anything! But you should be thrilled to have the exposure! And, unfortunately, many people will be. An old freelancer's mantra: You can die of exposure.
  

Excuses R Us

Do Nova Scotians lead the way when it comes to idiotic excuses told in the courtroom?

In this story, a fisherman who appears to have had illegal lobster on his boat rushes off to dump it into the water when fisheries officers arrive on the scene.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reports:

Mr. Herman was unloading gear from his boat on his wharf in Little Harbour, Lunenburg County, on May 28, 2006, when two helmeted fisheries officers pulled up on motorcycles.

Mr. Herman said he didn’t recognize them and assumed they were looking for his daughter. He said he suddenly remembered he had to do something on his boat, went back to it, picked up a bucket he said was filled with sand crab for bait and threw it over the side because he didn’t want the crab to die.

The fisheries officers, however, testified Mr. Herman knew them for at least 10 years and did recognize them. They said he turned and ran back to his boat when he saw them and jumped aboard.

Of course, when it comes to excuses, I still haven't found anyone to top the guy who crashed through a barricade drunk, then told the cops and the judge he had stopped -- just on the other side of the barricade -- and that the full bottle of rum in his car was proof he hadn't been drinking. If he had, the bottle would have been opened instead of sealed. The guy's story was that he felt an attack of his mystery illness (whose symptoms were remarkably similar to those of inebriation) coming on and he had to rush to his brother's house for help. Right.

Absurd Nova Scotia tourism ad

Nova Scotia has no idea how to brand itself. Or it has the wrong idea. No wonder tourism is dropping, and dropping, and dropping.

Case in point: a full-page ad in the new Reader's Digest (it's run elsewhere too) showing a hunky (I guess) guy in a kilt. He's leaning against a wall and holding a hammer.


Here is part of the copy that goes with the ad:

Tradition Doesn't Always Come with Grey Hair and a Cane

Since the kilt is rich in history and custom. you can see why many men to this day still wear one. You can also get a pretty good look at their legs.

This is a real winner, ain't it? First, it's offensive, second it's ridiculous. Maybe it's so ridiculous it's offensive.

Buddy in the ad is holding a hammer. Presumably it's not to use on the people mounting this campaign. So he must be some kind of construction worker I guess. The kind that wears a kilt to work. The kind that doesn't exist.

Just show him step-dancing or fiddling instead and get it over with.

Who is the audience for this? The ad is trying to appeal to the young hipster type, but also to emphasize tradition. Enter the URL that accompanies the ad and you don't get to the main Nova Scotia tourism page, but to the one that highlights the history of the province. It shows a dude playing a redcoat banging a drum.

To me, every single thing about this ad sends one strong message: We have no idea what the hell we are doing.

Public support? What dat?

Memo to the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, and to its head, Joan Jessome: No matter how righteous you think your cause may be, having healthcare workers at a children's hospital -- and the IWK is the most apple-pie charity in the province, with every school and community group apparently putting on funding drives for it -- walking off the job is not a good strategy if you want to gain any public support.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reports:

Ms. Jessome said she regretted the impact a strike would have on children like those being discharged Friday and their families, but that the workers were fed up.

We're talking about families with sick kids, and the workers are fed up? Are the workers, getting a raw deal? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised. But striking at a children's hospital? And trying to get public support?

I would hate to be a union communications officer in this case. It's the PR assignment from hell.

... and turn it off in court too.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Imagine the look on U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve's face when attorney Patrick Tuite's cell phone erupted in the midst of the Conrad Black/Hollinger trial here.

• • Why? Because the phone's tubular ring tone was from the movie "The Exorcist."

• • Quoth the judge to Tuite: "I hope you didn't program that ring just for this trial." When Tuite's phone rang again, an attorney quipped: "It's possessed."

Tuite told Sneed, "I think they thought it would keep the prosecutor demons away from our Hollinger clients."

The big dirty

Now this sounds like something straight out of the Trailer Park Boys. Good thing these boys are in the right town. Auditions for next season are probably happening soon.

A search for a man suspected of trying to steal money from a parking meter ended with a cellphone ring, Halifax police say...

Officers spotted one suspect right away and arrested him. They found the second suspect in a garbage bin by following the ring of a cellphone.

Ways I am glad my tax dollars are being spent

(This post has been updated.)

Via Rail spent years fighting to not make its trains accessible to people in wheelchairs.

Because adapting the trains would be too expensive.

Via lost. Now they've spent oodles on the fight and they still have to do the right thing and make the trains accessible.

Note to people in wheelchairs: I'm glad you won, but let me tell you, you haven't been missing much until now. The train is uncomfortable, more expensive, and slower than flying. Yep, it really does have everything going for it.

And those Renaissance cars? They're the worst.

Department of Personal Stupidity

Clip and save this handy guide to weekend fun!

1) Play a game of capture the flag with a bunch of speedy little 7-10-year-olds on a slippery field covered in snow and mud.

2) Ignore the subsequent pain in your knee.

3) Go out dancing that evening.

4) Wake up in the morning unable to bend your knee.

5) Spend the day at the local hospital's emergency room.