Summer News

In these last couple of days before the summer sun bakes us all into human pudding and the news media runs off and hides on their annual two-month vacation, there is still news – and most of it is pretty cool.

1 — The women of Saudi Arabia can drive. The last bastion of motor vehicle misogyny has fallen, and the women of King Salman’s private sandbox can legally drive cars! Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia actually is a giant sandbox and, aside from dropping their burkas off at the drycleaners, there’s really no place for the girls to go. (Sand Dune #68 isn’t that big an attraction.) Still, I imagine going through the drive-thru at Wendy’s is a big deal to someone who’s spent most of her life hanging out in a harem.

2 — That Canadian guy Jordan Peterson is suing Sir Wilfred Laurier University. Apparently he’s pissed off because a couple of their “open-minded” academics compared him to Adolf Hitler. Peterson’s contention is that Hitler ordered the murder of six million Jews; whereas all he (Peterson) did was say the gender neutral pronoun “ze” was bullshit and that is not strictly a crime against humanity. Meanwhile, the university maintains that politically-correct fascists always compare people who disagree with them to Hitler, and Peterson should quit being such an over-sensitive Alt-right snowflake. (Man! I wish Judge Judy could get hold of this one!)

3 — The super-duper poster boy for gender equality, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, just got hit with the hypocrite stick. Apparently, before Mr. Trudeau got in touch with his feminine side (and a pile of female votes) he spent some time touching a female reporter who wasn’t too happy about his little game of grab-ass — and said so. Trudeau’s actual response was, “I’m sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.” Interesting distinction on who is available for groping. However, don’t expect this awkward incident to storm through Twitter any time soon; we all know that social media is very careful about who they tar and feather. (I’m looking at you, Bill Clinton!)

But on the other hand:

4 — The cultural cleansing of America continues. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the woman who wrote Little House on the Prairie, has been dumped by the US Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC.) According to that illustrious body, Wilder’s books contain “anti-Native and anti-Black sentiments.” Wow! It must have come as a hell of a shock to those nitwits that something published in 1932 didn’t reflect the values of the 21^st century!

My chief worry about this is that, at some point in the not-so-distant future, all the books published before 1980 are going to be gathered up and given the Fahrenheit 451 treatment – including, ironically, Fahrenheit 451.

Winter News — Weird!

newspaper

Winter drags on, and for many of us, the light at the end of the tunnel is on a snow plow! (Normally, we don’t get snow in Vancouver, but this year we’ve gotten more than a bit.) However, the world continues to turn (more about that later) and the news isn’t totally bleak.

The American aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson has arrived in Vietnam, specifically Da Nang. Apparently, this is a goodwill tour with the extra added attraction of staring down the Chinese military presence in the South China Sea. (Kinda cool.) However, I can’t help thinking there might have been some little old couple out for a stroll, who took one look at that big bugger sailing into the harbour and totally freaked: “RUN, TRANG! THEY’RE BACK!”

Last week, a NASA satellite, doing a routine global warming flyover of the back of beyond Antarctica, picked up a pretty substantial “heat signature.” Given the way the ice in melting down there, I’m pretty sure more than one technician thought, “Holy crap! We’ve thawed out Godzilla!” However, on further investigation, it turned out to be nothing more than a gigantic pile of penguin poop. Of course, where there’s poop, there’s penguins, so the folks at NASA took a closer look and discovered a huge colony (over 1.5 million) of penguins. Apparently, these Adelie penguins have been living large for years at a place called Danger Island — simply because nobody knew they were there! At a time when Google Maps can read the licence plate on my Toyota, it does my soul good to see a waddle (yeah, that’s the collective) of crafty little penguins, hiding out from our invasive technology. Good on ya!

But I’ve saved the best for last:

The Flat Earth Society has announced it will hold its first ever international conference in Edmonton, Canada. Tickets range from $130.00 to $300.0, and there will be a number of keynote speakers. (I’m thinking a tweedy guy from Shropshire, England; a Bible guy from the American South; a witch and at least one Californian.) If you can’t attend, you can follow the proceedings online for $28.00 (22 Euros.) Quite a saving!
Personally, I don’t really care if a bunch of people get together and decide Kansas is a Rubik’s Cube, but it boggles my mind that tons of normal, reasonable people are going on Social Media and arguing with these Flat Earthers. Folks! Flat Earth people believe the world is flat. Flat! Despite centuries of evidence to the contrary — from Galileo to Neil Armstrong — they still believe that planet Earth is flat. Now, what argument could anybody possibly bring to the table that would convince them otherwise? Answer? None! Why? Because they think the Earth is flat!

Trust me, people! You’d be better off getting on Facebook and arguing with the cat who “plays” the piano.

Fake News — Not!

I really don’t understand the fascination with “fake” news. Why would anybody take the time and trouble to fake it when the “real’ news is so hilarious? For example:

There’s been an outbreak of theft at The Temple of Heaven Park (a UNESCO Heritage site) in Beijing. People are stealing — wait for it — toilet paper. Apparently, this isn’t just a few college sophomores trying to make ends meet; it’s an epidemic. To combat the problem, the powers-that-be have installed facial recognition software on the toilet paper dispensers. Everybody gets 60 centimetres per — uh — face, and if you want more, you have to wait 9 minutes or bring a friend. Fortunately, there’s also an attendant who has a secret stash to help out should the Kung Pao Chicken disagree with you. I don’t quite understand why you need sophisticated software if you already have an attendant hovering in the background, but … what the hell … cool technology is always fun.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, the latest trailer for the movie Wonder Woman débuted last week and it is not without controversy. Wonder Woman is out there kicking ass, but at the 1:47 mark, she lifts her arms and — OMG! — her armpits are clean-shaven. Twitter, the guardian of all that is good and decent on this planet, went nuts. The debate was on — with arguments on both sides. On one hand, Wonder Woman is an Amazon, raised on a secluded island of women. Therefore, she couldn’t possibly know anything about female grooming habits which (according to some) are a patriarchal invention. (Apparently, women who lack male supervision are hairy.) On the other hand, Wonder Woman is an Amazon, part of Greek mythology, a building block of western civilization, and the Ancient Greeks were fastidious about body hair. Therefore, it’s not a stretch to assume that a mythical future Queen of the Amazons would pay attention to her pits. Like equal pay for equal work and abortion rights, this war of words isn’t going to go away any time soon. Oddly enough, though, nobody seems too worried that Wonder Woman is actually a comic book character, created by William Moulton Marston in the 1940s. She’s not real, folks, and what she does in the shower every morning isn’t real either. Think about it!

My point is, seriously, who in their right mind would even attempt to make up stuff like this?

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