If you are speaking at NAME, please let me know.  Thanks, Shirley

just when you think you've seen it all...
 
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Skin+whitening+Facebook+launch...

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It's bad enough that we have suffered through the hypocritical obsession with a golfer's personal life...To listen to the arrogant Master's President chide this biracial man, to belittle him and tell him that he has disappointed not only golf fans, but their children and grandchildren
 
But now, we are exposed to Wood's dead father, coming back with the swoosh on his back, walking up the final hill to crucifiction....ya can't make this stuff up
 
http://mashable.com/2010/04/07/tiger-nike-ad/

I am not of this world...I give up...
We moved to Canada for a gentler, just a bit kinder world...and socialized medicine.  Since we have been in Quebec, Muslim women have been a target for hearings, and the notion of "reasonable accomodation." 
Following a Muslim woman's expellation from a College in Quebec last week, this new rule has just come down.  Read it and weep.
This is about freedom, belief, gender, and oppression, make no mistake
 
http://news.aol.ca/article/quebec-will-require-bare-face-for-service/789450/?icid=main|canada|dl1|link3|http://news.aol.ca/article/quebec-will-require-bare-face-for-service/789450/
 

I don’t want be just another kevetcher on the Olympic bandwagon, but we’ve been given so much to work with.  At first, I wanted to do a short piece, Charlie and the Inukshuk Factory.  It was to be based on my recent landings at the Vancouver Airport, only to be overwhelmed by the plastic and wooden Native simulacrum, and carwash brush-esque flag bombardment (printed with tribal symbols).  After dodging the “bring your tired, your poor and your humbled travelers to the res” themed baggage claim area, I was going to rant on about the neglected state of the urban reserve on Hastings, and Vancouver’s attempt to cover up the needs of our First Nations people.  But that sounded so bitt

Sisters and Brothers...the words have been said for the past 8 days about Haiti....here are words from a dear friend of ours in Montreal, done while he was home in Haiti...send it around.  send the music...

Beloved ones, a full year has passed, much has happened.  We have lost loves and gained new ones.  I wish you all the very best and blessings...With radical love, we will gain more by our commitments to those in need, those who don't have the luxuries we have...even by being able to read a post on the Internet.  Thank you from the bottom of my soul for the love, support, and thoughts you have given to me and the kids this year.  We are ok....we are progressing....and we will continue.  Please continue to support our website and contribute to the blogs. 

Up front, I am not picking on Australians.  I actually consider that "heart" is in the right place at times with these annual apologies.  Liberals might say, that "at least' they are saying sorry.

The latest mea culpa from Prime Minister Rudd came involving the some 150,000 kids taken to Australia "for a better life."  Naturally, the life wasn't so great.

On the side of the good:  Rudd is at least trying...although they are all dead, nice to say you're sorry

I don't think I could have predicted that at the mainstream AMC Cinema in Montreal, on a given day, that three (count em), three documentaries are being shown.  Along with the new romantic comedy tripe, the blood and guts scream screens, and the trivial kid stuff, we are able to screen Taqwacore:  The Birth of Punk Islam, It Might Get Loud, and The September Issue.

If you meet anyone who denies knowing a thing about soaps on tv, I think they are lying.  Soaps are the middle class dirty little secret.  Soaps somehow engage the viewer in the best and worst of life.  But alas, I come not to praise the soap, but to expose it.  It is obvious that soaps reflect a notion of the middle/upper class in North American society...the repetitive themes of romance, death, quest, riches, poverty...these come honestly from the notion of plot in fiction.  What I find compelling, is that even in 2009, the dominant discourse makes no apology for existing...in fact, if you aren't in that discourse, you are not compensated for your marginalization, and with each piano riff, the non-belonging viewer is sentenced to more exi

Normally, not plussed by famous people, last night was definitely a high in life for me.  How terrific to go to see one of the most important women in the 20th century.  (I will now rant about the conditions....a broken down auditorium, one security guard, incompetent tech assistants, bad screens, no crowd control, and a 50 minute wait to have technical assistance, which never worked)...btw, it was sponsored as a Media series.  methinks McGill University needs to stick to medicine and stay out of media.

OK, now the discussion.