Tag Archives for Toronto

Torontonians Acting More Like Zombies Than Usual

For real!

The undead rose, lumbered and moaned through the streets Saturday — albeit wearing  party hats with silkscreened brains, eyeballs and bugs — to celebrate the 10th-annual Toronto Zombie Walk.

Several hundred gory human corpses gathered at Nathan Phillips Square, terrifying onlookers in the downtown core as they slowly snaked their way across Queen St. W., up University Ave., east on Dundas St. and south on Yonge St.

Some of the undead costumes included a man in a meat grinder, a  zombified TTC worker and Curious George.

George A. Romero — the horror legend behind such films as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead — helped kick-off the annual walk by signaling the throwing of two fake severed heads into the crowd.

This is the first time during the walk’s history where organizers have partnered with the Heart and Stroke Foundation to spread awareness of  eliminating heart disease and stroke — the number one cause of zombie-itis.

Bah; why does a ‘walk’ need a good cause?  (Or a bad one, for that matter.)

Speaking of ‘Slutwalks’ (in that last link, there), they could combine the two, and have a Zombie Slutwalk, next year! ;)

Toronto Cabbies, Strippers Collecting Welfare

Your tax dollars at work, Torontonians…

Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the business licences holders (and the type of licence they hold) reporting zero income and collecting welfare from the City of Toronto in 2010-11:

Taxicab Driver — 759
Holistic Practitioner — 170
Burlesque Entertainer — 104
Eating Establishment — 97
Refreshment Vehicle Assistant — 68
Tow Truck Driver — 47
Body Rubber — 38
Retail Store (Food) — 37
Busker — 32
Building Renovator — 30
Limousine Driver — 26
Taxicab Owner — 21
Driving Instructor — 19
Public Garage — 16
Body Rub Parlour — 12
Non-Motorized Refreshment Vehicle Owner — 11
Hair Salon — 10
Other Businesses License Category — 42

Total: 1,539

— Source: City of Toronto Auditor General’s Office

‘Zhe’ & ‘Hir’

Toronto School Board guidelines on gender identity allow for non-masculine/feminine pronouns.

Posters from the TDSB’s safe and positive place campaign.

The Toronto District School Board this week issued a set of guidelines on how schools should accommodate transgendered students — spelling out everything from what washrooms they can use to how teachers should address them.

The stated goal is “to promote the dignity and equality of those whose gender identity and/or gender expression does not conform to traditional social norms,” the TDSB explained, but critics are divided on the anticipated impact.

On the issue of washrooms, the guidelines note that all students have the right to use a bathroom that “best corresponds to the student’s gender identity, regardless of the student’s sex assigned at birth.” Requiring a student to “prove” their gender through a doctor’s letter or identity documents is unacceptable, the board says.

Further, “students who wish to use pronouns other than the masculine or the feminine (such as ‘zhe’ and ‘hir’) need to be accommodated equally,” the guidelines note.

That’s where the board goes too far, said Doretta Wilson, executive director of the provincial education policy think tank Society for Quality Education.

“This has gone beyond ridiculous… We are men and women, whether or not we are transgendered,” Ms. Wilson said. “We identify somehow with one sex or another; we’re not neutered.”

Homeschool / privately school your kids!

Related.

Serious Gender Bender

Joe Warmington rightly takes the Toronto District School Board to task for its latest insanity.

“There are no rules for being a boy or a girl” — slogan on a TDSB poster.

So now the Toronto District School Board is telling kids they don’t have to be boys or girls?

What the hell is going on with these people?

[...]

What exactly do they mean “no rules” for a child’s gender?

And why are taxpayers paying for the TDSB to advertise to kids it’s okay to cross-dress, question their gender or be part of a polygamist family?

There are two posters out there in the school system that some feel do all of that.

There is a difference between tolerance and acceptance and encouragement and recruitment, too.

No matter how it’s spun, these posters outed by the Blazingcatfur blog show a bunch of children in essence cross-dressing or depicting boys playing with dolls or girls playing with trucks.

Gender bender stuff but it gets even more peculiar.

The other poster in question shows bathroom-door-style stick men and women — some showing two men together, some two women. But the next confusing message for our kids is the one where there are two mommies and a daddy or two daddies and a mommy.

Polygamy?

“I think it is pure propaganda which is fine directed at adults who know how to think for themselves,” said one advertising manager who also has a child in the public school system. “For children this is really not fair. These posters are too confusing! The message isn’t even clear. What’s more, advertising to children is not to be taken lightly.”

[...]

“This is all about a bunch of so-called progressives trying to re-define what is ‘normal’” said Sun News Network’s David Menzies of Menzoid Mornings who brought these posters to my attention. “The new normal apparently includes polygamy (illegal in Canada last time I checked) and dressing a young boy up as a drag queen (borderline child abuse in my book). But these edu-crats are the ‘co-parents’ and who are we to question their wisdom?”

No rules for being a boy or a girl, eh?

And no rules, it seems, for people trying to disorient them.

Homeschool / privately school your kids!

Ryerson Students Break Guinness World Record for Cowbell Ensemble

You can never have enough cowbell!

Ryerson University, gathering 1,003 students on Wednesday for the feat, broke the record for the world’s largest cowbell ensemble.

Toronto based folk-rock band SEAM lead the crowd through the 1976 Blue Oyster Cult hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”

After two minutes, confetti erupted and cheers began as the record was unofficially broken. The record had involved just 640 people in Switzerland, in 2009.

Toronto Tells Celebrated Volunteers to Stop Beautifying Park

That’s what lazy, unionized, parks and rec ’workers’ who do nothing are for, darnit!

Two award-winning community volunteers say the City of Toronto has told them to stop whacking weeds, caring for grass and doing other work to keep a popular park spotless.

For two decades, Stickie Caddle and Blue Jays Curtis have worked at Fergy Brown Park for free.

The two have taken it upon themselves to tackle the waist-high weeds and grass, drain the pools of water and lovingly maintain the cricket pitch.

They’ve even won awards for making Fergy Brown Park a better place.

As a bonus, Curtis also plants and grows vegetables.

But the city’s parks department has ordered them to stop. Not because it doesn’t like what they’re doing, but out of concern they might hurt themselves — and then sue.

“Any place in Barbados you could go and do this kind of work — and people would object to it? Man, they’d give you two more weed whackers,” said Caddle.

Curtis is frustrated too.

“You’re going to disrespect me for doing voluntary work?”

Why, yes, they are, dude.  You make their useless workers look bad, doncha know; it surely has nothing to do with fears of you and your buddy getting hurt and suing…

Toronto Bans Plastic Bags

What idiots Toronto city councillors be (except for Mayor Rob Ford and Councillor Doug Ford, and a handful of others).

Toronto has become the first major city in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags in a surprise city council vote that the mayor denounced as “ludicrous.”

Mayor Rob Ford, who predicted the ban will face a legal challenge, had asked city council to scrap Toronto’s contentious five-cent levy for plastic shopping bags. Council supported the mayor and voted to scrap the tax – but then also agreed with a last-minute motion to ban bags outright, beginning Jan. 1.

“It is not a smart move by council to ban plastic bags,” Mr. Ford said after vote. “I don’t think it is going to hold up in court. You can’t tell people they can’t give out plastic bags. To me it’s ludicrous.”

Marion Axmith, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, warned that the move would kill jobs in Toronto and said the industry would consider all its options.

PSA: Drink Cask Ale

Wikipedia:

Cask ale or cask-conditioned beer is the term for unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned (including secondary fermentation) and served from a cask without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure.

What this means is that cask ale doesn’t have much carbonation, and is very creamy. It’s the Platonic Form of beer. Most big cities now have a few pubs serving cask ale, and you should always order whatever is available in a cask. It will almost always be better than anything else.

*     *     *

Local interest: I recently had the opportunity to visit Toronto’s C’est What, which has no less than five casks at any given time. Highly recommended. Also, check out CASK!, a blog devoted to cask ale in Toronto. They have a list of establishments serving the stuff.

Toronto’s not-so-finest

Oops!

In the rural area to the east of the city I live in, some residents talk about certain local cops, including ones high up on the force, driving around under the influence, getting let off by their brothers in blue…

One standard for the general public; another for themselves…  Not justice, but “just us”; kinda like grandstanding “Drug War”, “tough on crime” politicians who admit to youthful indiscretions involving marijuana, yet crusade for ever-tougher penalties on even casual users…

At least in this case, some form of justice appears to have been done…  But I’m going to wait and see if they boot him off the force, permanently, and charge him, though, before cheering.

(BTW, ‘Finest’ what?  Why do police call themselves ‘Toronto’s Finest’ or ‘New York’s Finest’, etc.?

What the hell does that mean, anyway?  Finest citizens?  Finest people?

Finest cops?  Well, they’re the only cops; that makes them the finest – and the worst!  Like I’m an only child, so I’m my parents’ oldest and youngest child; their most favourite and least favourite. :)

Stupid, that – and all them who label themselves such.  The fact such idiocy has caught on everywhere only goes to show how many stupid people there are, in the force, everywhere.  All with badges; ick.)