• Value your privacy? Reject sexual assault? You’re under arrest.

    Anyone miss the good old days when 95% of the mockery *wasn’t* caused by the US or Canadian governments? Tne Transport Security Administration (TSA) apparently doesn’t. In round 8975641 of the government versus your right not to be randomly groped before you can go on your way, the TSA steps up their game to include inventing a charge and arresting a woman. Her official charge? Disorderly conduct. The actual charge? Refusing to let a TSA agent give her daughter a pat-down.

    “I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked,” the mom is reported to have replied.

    As for the pat-down option, the police report states that the mom didn’t want her daughter to be “touched inappropriately or have her “crotch grabbed.”

    TSA agents say she became belligerent and verbally abusive. The woman was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

    Suddenly, I feel a whole lot safer should I ever lose my mind and decide to fly into the US. No, wait, that’s not entirely accurate–that would be relief. Relief in not ever actually planning to fly into the US. Yeah, that’s it.

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  • Music Canada: not much about music, or Canada.

    So you’ve probably heard mutterings in recent days about an organization going by the name Music Canada. You’d think they’re an advocacy group for Canadian musicians, wouldn’t you? In an alternate universe, you might be correct. In this one, though? Nope, it’s only the Canadian Recording Industry Asociation renaming itself. This post is just writing itself using bits and pieces of other posts. Like this one. And this one. And probably several others. Ah hell–let’s just chalk the whole thing up to different name, same organization, same good screwing. Cover all the bases? Yeah, I think so. Music Canada? How about no.

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  • I have to snerk a minute. Please hold.

    Jul 13 6:49pm: how many times do you get rejected by odsp before getting the pension

    Sounds like someone’s had worse luck with ODSP than I have. And I’ve had some luck.

  • Once again, laws against distracted driving don’t do a damn thing.

    Almost as routine as the argument against so-called piracy are the arguments against so-called distracted driving. Calling your boss to let him know you’re stuck in trafick and some moron behind you hits you? Well, you shouldn’t have been calling your boss. Letting your girlfriend know you’re 3 blocks away and to please for the love of cheese be outside and some fool runs a red light? You shouldn’t have been on your phone. So the law says, anyway. How about instead, we take some friendly advice from the Ottawa Sun’s Brigitte Pellerin and shove the blame for it right in the face of the ones actually responsible–the idiot drivers.

    Some people out there (though not, obviously, you personally – my readers are way smarter, taller, and better looking than average) are such bad drivers
    that they don’t need distractions to be a menace to others. They just need to be placed behind the wheel.

    Some other people, by contrast, have no problem driving properly while making a quick call to their husband so he knows what time I’m coming by to pick
    him up from work.

    Which is escentially the meet of the issue right there. You’re going to have awesome drivers, and you’re going to have morons. Put a cell phone in an awesome driver’s hand, or have the radio on in the background, they’re still going to be an awesome driver. Take the phone out of the moron’s hand, or mandate he turn off the radio, he’s still going to be a moron. And then we’ll end up with laws against talking to passengers while driving. And they’ll still be slapping the wrong people on the wrist for the wrong reasons. And getting escentially the same result. Yeah, texting and driving, or talking on the phone and driving, whatever it may end up being, probably isn’t the safest thing you could be doing. But rather than finding and ticketting everyone and their mother for a quick “I’ll be there in 5 minutes” phone call, Pellerin has another suggestion for local officials.

    Instead of making sure I’m not reapplying Burt’s Bees or arguing with Lowell, what the nice officer should do is check that I’ve had enough sleep or that
    I’m not on some mood-altering drug that might affect my concentration. I’m not talking about booze or pot or crack here. I’m talking about the legal medicines
    Canadians gobble in astounding quantities.

    And, just to illustrate her point, she asks some pretty interesting–and I’m assuming rhetorical–questions.

    Nobody’s at their best when tired. But some people are so sleep-deprived they are in the same situation as a driver who’s drunk. Shouldn’t there be some
    law against driving while sleepy? How about driving while on Prozac?

    And does everyone who takes allergy medication follow the advice on the box that says it’s better to avoid driving?

    Tongue in cheak, perhaps. But she makes some very interesting points–particularly in terms of just how dangerous dashing off a quick text while behind the wheel is in comparison to driving while tired. And yet, as she points out, the police don’t check for that–they’re more concerned with whether or not you’ve been using that phone sitting on the console beside you. Now, maybe I’m a little backwards here–that’s entirely possible, but you’d think these other folks would be more of a concern to local governments. I suppose, if only it wasn’t all about a quick cash grab.

  • Finally, OC Transpo goes completely accessible. Sort of.

    On Tuesday, after much, much too long, OC Transpo finally grew a set and retired its high-floor buses, replacing them with their low-floor equivalents. Awesome news for anyone with mobility issues who had a hell of a time boarding the older models–I have no trouble with this whole walking thing, and I’d occasionally nearly land on my face if I didn’t know exactly which bus was picking me up. A side benefit is, apparently, now all buses in Ottawa are equipped with the automated stop announcement system. Now, here’s hoping the system actually gets a bit more reliable (I’d provide a link, but it 404’s on me… way to go, Ottawa Sun).

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  • Verizon breaks your phone, charges $20 extra to fix it.

    Just when you think “Hey, a feature I can actually find a use for”, your local phone company things “Hey, a feature I can find a price for”. Latest example? Verizon. Certain android phones sold by the company come with the ability to be used as a wireless hotspot, not unlike the iPhone on any company that doesn’t try and milk you out of every spare dime you can find–hi, Telus, nice to see you. Until recently, those phones could be used in that fashion easily, and freely–allowing you to take advantage of your cellular data connection using your laptop, should you have no access to a traditional wi-fi connection and need to make use of your computer for something net-ish. Fast forward to earlier this week. Verizon pushed out an update to those particular phones, effectively disabling that feature. Their reasoning? Now, it costs extra. Google’s apparently helping them with this, having agreed to remove apps from the Android Market that might make it easier to work around the partial bricking. You don’t actually own your phone. It’s a rental–a very expensive, non-returnable rental. You can thank Verizon for the reminder.

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  • Test number 2. That’s it, I promise.

    So my new email solution, much like the old one, doesn’t create categories on demand–at least on the WordPress side. Whoops. This post is just to make sure it sticks posts in preexisting categories. There’s mockery coming this morning–just as soon as I determine whether or not I’ll be firing it from the email client, or the website directly.
    Update: And hey look, it adds very little extra HTML to its posts. Nifty. Also: it respects existing categories… this could be fun. Tutorial to come for the curious–but not on this little caffeine. Now, back to the mockery.
  • I may or may not have just broken the blog.

    Posting by email has gone the way of the dinosaur in recent months, due to a crap ton of security issues related to the utility I was using. If this two-sentence post actually makes it, and in the category it’s supposed to, I might just have an excuse to throw a small party–any last minute tweaking aside. Yay, or something.
  • As far as thieves go, these guys are freaking geniuses.

    I’d love to actually meet these two unnamed individuals for the sole purpose of shaking their hands for coming up with this bright idea. Right before I punch both of them in the face and hold out for the local cops. Two people in the south end of the city have come up with the brilliant idea of finding out if a house is occupied by ringing the doorbell. If it’s empty, they break in, disable the alarm, and–presumedly–help themselves to what’s there. If someone’s actually home, they have themselves a prepared script asking if the occupant has items for sale, or some other trivial matter that would bring random folks to your door at random o’clock in the afternoon/evening. An actual smart couple of criminals–who knew? If ever they wind up answering the door for an undercover cop, mocking them might actually be a challenge. thank God I like a challenge.

  • Attention Brian Coldin: the rest of Central Ontario doesn’t want to see what ya got.

    Before I go tearing into this guy, I’m first going to say right here I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with what people choose to wear–or, in some cases, not wear–on their own time, and in their own home. In fact, if some people knew how I dressed when I’m not planning to go anywhere, they’d probably have some not so pleasant names for me–and I’d probably still promise to maybe eventually find 30 seconds to care. But there’s such a thing as being presentable in public. That does not, contrary to the beliefs of some, include presenting yourself, sans clothing, at an A and W drive through where a teenager happened to be working.

    In this case, Brian Coldin runs a noodist resort in central Ontario, and thought he might go grab himself a burger from the A and W not entirely too far away. Only problem is, well, his idea of appropriate atire stopped being appropriate when he cleared the border of his resort. He pulled up, placed his order, and gave the poor girl working drive through a little more than she probably wanted to look at. And now, he’s trying to have the laws changed in such a way that showing up at somewhere like a drive through sans any kind of clothing is perfectly acceptable.

    Okay, referring back to how I dress at home, I have absolutely no problem with somebody who wants to go around their own place with absolutely nothing on–I personally wouldn’t go strictly and completely no clothes, but I get why some people would. And that’s perfectly fine–in your own home. But, really, if I’m going out somewhere–yeah, even a drive through, I’m damn well finding a shirt and a pair of freaking pants first. Yes, even if it’s mid-June and too goddamn hot degrees outside–just because I’m perfectly comfortable doing it doesn’t mean the several hundred people I need to interact with in a typical day out are going to be–or should be expected to be–comfortable seeing it. But then, I’m also used to the general rule of no shoes, no shirt, no service–but that’s just me.

    You don’t go to work on a typical day expecting to see a naked dood–or chick, for that matter–pull up to your window and hand you payment for a burger he or she produced from–I won’t even guess where. In fact, we put people in jail who usually carry that expectation in public–usually because it leads to something else a little less innocent than hoping to see a lot more than a little skin.

    A small note to mister Coldin. I don’t care how naked you want to be or for how long. Neither does this judge. Neither does the rest of central Ontario. Just do it on your own property, for cryin’ out loud–just because we don’t care doesn’t mean we want to look at, or serve, random naked dood from local naked people resort. And if, by accident, you actually win this case, I seriously hope to see a lot more “No shoes, no shirt, no service” signs. Otherwise, my out to dinner outfit–and I will still wear an actual outfit–will include a bottle of disinfectant. Just sayin’.

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