I am going to start mentioning events that I plan to avoid on my blog. This will help any reader who is trying to avoid meeting me IRL at all costs.

On June 13th and !4th, I will not be at the Washboard Music Festival. It is taking place in Ohio and I am worried that Neil Young might show up and do an impromptu performance of the political song of the same name (the 385th Greatest Song of All Time). He is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and I suspect that he plays the washboard, even though it’s not a real instrument.

I try to continue to like Neil Young and I really don’t have anything against washboards either. I just worry that things might get out of hand.

I forgot.

On April 18th, 2002 an American Airman dropped a 500 pound bomb on Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. Ainsworth Dyer, Richard Green, Marc Léger, and Nathan Smith dies as a result of this tragic mistake.

I was reminded of soldiers losing their lives there by one of today’s headlines. The risks are often on my mind because I have members of my extended family stationed there.

I like Dick Cheney. I mean, he is not pretentious. He is no more or less evil than he lets on. The crazy speculation about a naked lady reflected in his shades in an official photograph is amusing. It is the closest that he has ever been to seeming sexy. Maybe his sexiness is the real reason for his steadfast refusal to run for President. He knows that his nation is not yet ready for a sexy President.

By the way, it is just the reflection of the VP’s hand gripping his pole.

First off, I want to say that I like Barrack Obama and he would be my choice if I had any choice in the matter. I have expressed that sentiment on a few occasions and sometimes I hear or read people saying that he is full of hot air or all style and no substance. There are dozens of ways for people to say the same thing. I was reminded of the situation today when I ended up listening to The Cult of Personality on YouTube. I like to think of the criticism as a fall back position by stubbornly partisan people who would prefer to be able to pick apart what he says and instead have to be content with spouting off the mantra that he is all talk.

I am flabbergasted by the arguments that some people make about how he would not be able to DO various things. I have gotten to the point where I think that they imagine an elected President should go around increasing the GDP, improving health care and education and winning wars with his or her bare hands. In actuality, Presidents are supposed to make speeches and make policy decisions. This might be beside the point, but Obama has the biggest hands of all the candidates.

As Canada remembers its war dead today, Canadian soldiers are in Afghanistan, where poppies grow. 90% of the World’s heroin comes from this country. The Taliban get an estimated $10 million dollars a year in protection money from drug lords. It is a logical assumption that the drug lords do not want stability, because the drug trade could not possibly flourish as it is now if there were conditions that allowed for the rule of law to prevail.

Please do not use illegal drugs. When you do, you are supporting terrorism. In North America, where cocaine is the hard drug of choice, users have in the past been unwittingly supporting covert operations by the CIA that resulted in untold suffering in Central America. Even though marijuana has less adverse effects on users and is often grown in stable developed countries, the illegal nature of the supply chain means that users are connecting them selves to violent crime in a tangential way. Activists that promote the legalization of marijuana should STOP using before they start advocating and only start partaking of the relatively innocuous drug when it is made legal and there is an ethical supply chain.

Rockstar Games is playing to the gay demographic with its latest installment of the manhunt series. I think it’s great that they are getting away from the violence that seems to be so endemic with most of the games that kids are playing these days. Here is a short demo of the game…

Even if your teenage boy is not actually gay, you should consider buying him manhunt2 for Christmas because it teaches a lot of valuable interpersonal skills.

Don’t act shocked if your kids ask you to let them buy this game. Some of the marketing is not focused on the homo-erotic gameplay that makes up 99.999% of the game.

Budweiser drastically changed their highly successful Real American Heroes radio spots in the wake of September 11th, 2001. MP3’s are still kicking around on the internet and some people have created some mildly entertaining YouTube videos using these ads as their soundtracks.

I am not going to embed any of them because I think heroism is still a sensitive subject. Copyright infringement is something that upsets some people as well.

I did a search on the term Real American Heroes on Youtube and I found it interesting that, when they were ranked by relevance, there was an unexpected hero tucked in between the golf ball washing machine inventor and the Chinese food delivery man. That hero is Cindy Sheehan.

The Colorado State University is in a bit of turmoil after the editor-in-chief of the school paper published an emotional opinion piece that included THE BAD WORD. This doesn’t sound like much of a big deal, but he directed it towards the White House Administration. Republicans within the university community are called for his resignation. He has emphatically said that he will not resign and is making it a 1st Amendment issue. People are pretending to be offended and asking that he be fired.

If you are not damaged by reading the word, go check out the comments that follow J. David McSwane’s published refusal to resign.

I am not offended by profanity. I am not impressed by it either. If I had been looking over Mr. McSwane’s shoulder as he wrote, I would have advised some revision. What’s done is done though and I hope something good comes of the stand that he is now taking on the grounds of freedom of speech.

I am from Nova Scotia. Some high school kids from that Canadian Province made international headlines when they mobilized their schoolmates with a demonstration against bullying. I talked about the story with my mother over the telephone and she agreed that they were exceptional kids. She did however ask me why the bullied kid had worn a pink shirt to his first day of high school. If I had been prepared for the question, I would have said that he was making a fashion statement, just like most of the other kids, and that he had the right to make any kind of fashion statement that he wanted as long as it fell within accepted societal norms.

I told her that they are in style. That was a few days ago. Today I did see one very stylish guy in a pink tee shirt at JFK Square. I don’t think it is a widespread trend.

The good news from Nova Scotia this week is about some high school students who took a bold stance against bullying. A grade 9 boy had worn a pink shirt to his first day of school and he became the victim of a bullying incident as a result. Two seniors who witnessed the bullying decided that it was time to address this type of behavior with some bold action.

They spearheaded an effort to dress as many students as possible in pink the next day. My impression from the reporting is that the level of participation was limited more by supply logistics than sentiment. The bullies were reportedly upset.

This kind of brave initiative should be included on the resumes of these two students. Back when I went to school, the answer for every tense issue seemed to be a walk out. The Pink shirts were a brilliant idea that directly addressed the issue and hopefully will result in positive change.

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