Annoyances and advertising

Petty Annoyance of the day :

I know I’ve already mentioned this, here or elsewhere, but men in busses are hugely annoying. Well men sitting down at any rate.

What is with the spread-your-legs-as-far-as-they’ll-go thing? What? You can’t close them because you’re too well hung? As if…

And when you spread out the top half reading the paper, well, I wouldn’t mind ripping off any and all body parts that are pushing me into the corner of the bench. But I haven't yet. I'm good that way, at least until the time I simply can't take it anymore. It might be YOU!!




Yesterday, with my copy of Elle magazine, I received a “gift” (oh yippi), a little pocket containing two (count ‘em TWO!!!) panty liners (double yippi).

Now, coming with a woman’s magazine, this makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? But then you open up the little pocket and on the inside cover you have a picture of a really hot boy…

Am I alone in not understanding why? Wear Incognito panty liners and hot boys will want you??? Seriously, what the fuck?

Meh

I really have to stop reading blogs when I’m PMSing because every one I read makes me wonder why I write one myself, then think I suck at it, then slap myself around the head a bit and yadda yadda yadda. I annoy the shit outta myself when I get this way.

Or else I could get a hysterectomy. That would work.

Or I could just wallow in my pity party and stop blogging for the duration.

There’s a plan… I'll go watch the rain.

Another rant.

Another rant and then I promise I'll move to pretty birds and flowers for my next post.

The Canadian (or at least Quebec) justice system is just pissing me off. I’m a very liberal person, what some people would call a bleeding heart, but damn, this is just too fucking much. A pedophile has just been convicted. He’s 68 years old and not in the best of health. The judge has condemned him to house arrest and he is obliged to stay away from children for the duration of his sentence. All this of course because of his health issues. I shit you not.

Just dump him into the general prison population. As a pedophile, they’ll take care of all his health problems real quick.

Goddamn it, what the fuck is WRONG with people!

Rant over. The Jazzer will now go fume in a corner. Now back to your regularly scheduled activities.

Rants and Petty Annoyances

Petty annoyance of the day:

People who walk down the street with cell phones screwed to their ears annoy me.

People who walk down the street with hands free phones, waving their arms, and talking at the top of their lungs (maybe the hands free thing brings that on) – well they just freak me right the fuck out. Used to be people walking down the street waving their arms and screeching at the top of their lungs were deeply disturbed individuals. Now, well, I guess they still are.

Dear people with hands free phones (or with regular cells), believe me I. DON’T. WANT. TO. KNOW. Really. Your stories are of no interest to me unless they involve good food and/or kinky sex. Perhaps a list of really good wines to try out would also be acceptable. Otherwise: BASTA!!

Rant of the day:

Charles Guité who, along with others involved in the sponsorship fraud, embezzled a couple of million* of the Canadian taxpayers hard earned dollars was sentenced yesterday. He got three and a half years.

Not that he’ll spend three and a half years in prison. No. Seven months will be about it because in 1996, the Canadian government, in its infinite wisdom, voted a law saying that after having done 1/6th of your sentence, you were free to go (Oh, and the time spent in prison while waiting for your sentence and trial and all that count). I can’t help but wonder if perhaps it was a way of saving themselves if and when their time came. The question begs an answer: Why 1/6th? Why not 1/10th? Why not simply say, OK, you're sentenced to 10 years, but hey, why don't you just go on home now and be a good person**. And why don't judges now give out sentences that take into account the fact that people are out after seven months of a three year sentence?

Of course, the light sentence is understandable. I mean c’mon people, it’s a victimless crime! No one was hurt. Never mind that millions of dollars we worked really hard to give the government are down the drain – actually each and every government could probably be tried for embezzlement for the money they waste. But hell, it’s not their money so what the fuck.

Guy Cloutier*** spent 10 years molesting at least two underage children. He got 42 months also, and the 1/6th rule applies. The only way to get out of the 1/6th rule is if you can prove the person is a threat to society (i.e. Karla Homolka who did her complete 12 years).

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. If you know any criminals, send them to us. It's easy livin' here in the land of snow and slush.



* Yes, I know, our scandals are pathetically small. Canadians are too nice for Enron.

** Actually, they do this quite a lot. They're big into house arrest now. Cheaper I guess, saves taxpayers money. Gotta love the paradox.

*** Doesn't it just figure that the only English article I found on this was in Wikipedia. I love Wikipedia (for the record though, I didn't spend hours searching).

Working for me?!?

Today is a great day for Quebecers (or maybe Canadians as a whole). Today - if I understood correctly on the radio this morning, which is debatable since I'm nowhere near at my best in the early morning - is the day we start working for ourselves. Until today, every penny we earned was for the government. Half the year we work as slaves. Half the years not a penny we earn is ours.

Or maybe they were saying that this year, the miracle wouldn't happen in June, but rather in mid-November.

I choose to believe the first option. I'm an optimist that way.

Pun

All credit for this goes to Simi-Bee, who some of you know.


Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good).....




A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.


Just sayin'

Porn vs. Erotica and Meal Bars

A friend was looking at the book I mentioned in my previous post, Forbidden Erotica, and the question arose: when does pornography become erotica? The pictures in this book are definitely pornographic, but the feeling of them isn’t the same as in what you see on the internet or in magazines. But the same acts are depicted by men and women and various combinations thereof. The feeling just isn’t there though. It seems more, well, cute, quaint and OMG-they-did-that-back-then-ish.

So, when? If a picture is 100 years old, does it become erotica? What is erotica versus pornography? My erotica is probably someone else’s hard core porn and vice versa. Is there a formula, a more or less clear cut line?
The common wisdom is that porn degrades women. How about degrading men, does that count? And again, what I find degrading is probably not what someone else finds degrading…

And is all porn bad? Mr. Jazz and I have been known to watch the odd "instructional" DVD and it was quite amusing and, well instructional - at least as far as we, ahem, managed to see. Does that make me a sleazeball? I don't think so, and if it does, well so be it, I can live with that.

Which reminds me of a conversation with a colleague recently. She had seen a completely veiled woman at her neighborhood grocery store (which seems sort of well just weird, ya know). She asked me how I felt about this? Did I find it degrading (there's that word again) to women, and oppressive, and should the practice be banned (not that you see that many women in Montreal who are completely veiled, the odd hijab here and there perhaps).

I dunno about banning it, what would be the point really? These women would simply end up never leaving their homes. Personally, I don't see how anyone can stand for that, but it's a whole different culture. I hope these women's daughters won't stand for it though, and their granddaughters and so on.

But degrading? I think it's more degrading for men, since women are veiled to keep them from the concupiscent looks of men. To keep them safe from men. As if all men are animals who feel the need to jump on any woman they see. Give men some credit please. Although it is paradoxical that men are the ones who want to keep their women safe... from others as bad as themselves? Somehow I don't think being veiled is keeping these women any safer. I'd like to see statistics on rape... though obviously rape doesn't exist in those communities. OK, I'll stop shooting off my mouth now.

On a totally different tack: Meal bars. Ewww. My m-i-l left me a sample at home the other day. Damn, those things are nasty. Tasted like a chocolate sawdust brownie. Whoever decided that you could replace a meal with a bar is in severe need of psychiatric help. Seriously, how hard is it to make a sandwich? There is no reason to eat that crap. Why do we fall for this stuff?

Advertising? If so, damn they’re good because although no amount of advertising will ever have me eating those meal bars, it seems lots of people buy them. I guess they're doing something right.

Hexak..whateverphobia

This cough is draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaining me. Yesterday, despite various puffers (Ventolin and Flovent) was particularly bad, I hacked my way through the day and spent the first half hour after I went to bed seemingly trying to get my lungs to exit my body à la Exorcist. Leftovers from 6-6-6? * It’s frustrating, it’s exhausting and I just want it to stop, even though my abs are getting a helluva workout.

Yesterday evening I finally did a collage that had been rattling around in my head for the past month. It started with a sentence which just popped into my head one day: Mary suddenly realized that she had chosen the wrong door.

I had sort of envisaged a Price is Right type thing, found pics of doors and of Mary and well, from there it somehow did a complete 180 from cute to rather “naughty”. I was flipping through a book Mr. Jazz brought home a while back, Forbidden Erotica, a book of erotic (pornographic?) pictures from the 1860s on. (As soon as there were cameras, there were people – men? – taking pictures of people having sex. And lordy people, we have invented nothing! But yet again, I digress).

When I saw those pictures, it suddenly struck me that Mary, sweet and innocent though she seemed, had a naughty voyeuristic side and a bit of text (Or had she???) and several pictures from the book were added behind the door. **

It turned out pretty much like I had visualized but don’t tell my mother!


* Oh and did you know that there’s actually a phobia related to 666 (probably what the patients who refuse to see Big Brother’s physiotherapist suffer from). It’s called Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

** Sorry, no pics, I have no digital camera...

Apocalypse Nope.

Well, we seem to have miraculously survived the apocalypse. Whew, it twas rather touch and go there for a while, but you figure once it's tomorrow in Australia it can’t really happen anymore can it? If the apocalypse is on a particular date, is there a window of "apocalypse time" when the whole world is the same day? Or does the "beast" work on Greenwich Mean Time? There’s something to ponder for those who have really nothing more productive to do – and how I wish I was one of them.

Last weekend (I think), in Toronto, a terrorist cell was busted. Now muslim religious leaders are coming out to say that they condemn terrorism, that their community condemns it, the usual speech, ya know.

Question is why? Why do they have to do that? If these terrorists were christian, would christian leaders go on air to say they condemn it? Would jewish leaders? No. They wouldn’t. It says a lot about our society that mulsims feel the need apologize for their religion when a bunch of nutjobs goes ballistic. Do we really think because the terrorists are muslim, all muslims are terrorists? How does that follow?

It doesn’t. And it’s sad that many people might think so.

It's the end of the world as we know it...

I’m fascinated by the fascination people have with things that are even slightly out of their daily routine.

Yesterday, as I entered the mall to go catch the subway I saw a huge crowd of people peering down into the lower level. I raised my eyes and saw the same thing on the upper level – about 50 people looking down.

When I finally managed to make my way to the lower level and the subway, I saw what all the fuss was about. Two or three people were standing in front of Zellers yelling at each other, surrounded by Zellers employees who were most likely trying to stop them from strangling each other.

This was causing a massive pileup of people, all standing there watching. Watching what? An argument.

What the hell is the point to that? I seriously don’t get it. Am I not curious enough? Sure, I’ll have a look, but between that and standing around watching… I just don’t see the point – or the interest. Do these people have so little going on in their lives that this is the high point of the day?

The same thing happens on the highway. Drives me insane when traffic is blocked up for kilometres because of an accident on the other side of the highway. We aren’t involved; we don’t have to slow down to go around it. Nope people are stopping on a fuckin’ highway to look at an accident! Is it an “oh-cool-maybe-I’ll-get-to-see-blood-and-gore” thing? If so, it’s just sick.

But then, who the hell am I to judge – except of course when it takes me double the time to get to the cottage because of the rubberneckers.

Remember, today is 6-6-6 day. Apparently all sorts of nutjobs are calling for the apocalypse. Today the beast will be unleashed on the world. Evil will triumph (as if it hadn’t already). Repent, repent. If they’re right, well, it was nice knowing you. If not, we’ll just wait for their next end of the world announcement. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine*... Stay tuned.


* Thank you REM

Smoke Free, Take 2

You know those days when you hate your life? Your job stinks, you can’t for the life of you understand why you’re wasting your time spending all this time doing something you really couldn’t care less about with people you don’t – in most cases – care about either. And for what?
I don’t even wanna contemplate that particular question. Bleh.

In less than a month I’ll be 45 and I’m having the usual existential crisis. It’s not even original, just the ordinary mid-life “what am I doing with my life” crap. Even my existential angst is totally within the norm. Totally bland and uninteresting, like me, like my life… so enough about that, who gives a fuck anyway. I’m thankful that at least when I get like this I annoy the hell out of myself within an hour or so. Since the choice is to walk along and slap myself silly or get the fuck over myself, I go for the latter option; much less painful all around.

So, the smoke-free bar experiment was a resounding success. The place still reeked of cigarette smoke of course, but it was amazing to actually be able to breathe and not be obliged to leave after 15 minutes.

Newest trend in Montreal, or so SKOAL is hoping: Chewing tobacco. The day after it became illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants, they had taken out full page ads in several of the free alternative papers touting their product: “All the kick of tobacco without the smoke”. Somehow I can’t help but picture a bunch of old men sitting around a stove in the general store with a spittoon at their feet spitting out a stream of brown which hits the spittoon (or the floor beside it) with a resounding plop.

I don’t know where they’re going to spit the stuff in bars (unless they begin providing spittoons), but hey, have your poison as long as you’re not poisoning me at the same time (apparently a half hour of chewing is about equal to four cigarettes – less lung cancer but more mouth and throat cancer). With my luck, I’ll probably step in chewing tobacco spit and slip and break open my head, thus ending forever my foray into the new and wonderful world of smokeless bars.

There is also, of course, a coalition of smokers taking the government to court over this. Apparently there is no real proof that second hand smoke is bad for you, so they’re trying to get the ban reversed. Well, whatever.