In the world of comics, one might think that a hero’s biggest threat would be Kryptonite, killer robots, meteors, or a myriad of would be world conquerors and mad scientists.
Nope. It’s a vagina.
(cover to Flash #232)
Monthly Archives: June 2007
Big Brother 8
Just when I was tired of thinking about the state of the world all the time, my annual summer brain candy comes back.
Next week, Big Brother will return with the eighth edition of the American version of the reality show.
This year, producers are putting people together who bear a grudge of some kind against some of the other players. So yeah, that’s dumb. I’d really rather players with no unrevealed past connection to each other but that’s how they do it.
The new cast like with photos is available here. A real cross section of society to include both the pretty and dumb and the dumb and pretty and the pretty dumb. And there’s a guy who appears to be appropriately named Dick.
I hate them all already. I can’t wait for the show to begin.
Child Soldiers
A few weeks back, after seeing an interview by Brian Stewart on the Fifth Estate, I read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. It’s a frank and unsentimental account of Beah’s experience during the Sierra Leone civil war.
After his village is wiped out by RUF rebels, a 12 year-old Beah and his friends make their way from village to village when eventually they are more or less forced into working for the government army to fight the rebels. They are controlled with drugs and brainwashed with war movies and Beah, now a teenager, becomes a killer.
It’s at times difficult to read because of what he goes through but it’s also worth. You rarely read, in mainstream media, direct accounts from people affected by, and participating in, war, particularly from African countries. Foreign correspondants will deliver the news but rarely will an African speak for him or herself.
Today, a U.N. court in Sierra Leone convicted three members of of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, which seized power in 1997, of 11 charges related to war crimes. In Beah’s case, it was the previous government which used him as a child soldier, although this was also done by the RUF.
Today’s verdict, according to the article, marks the first time there has been a conviction on child recruitment.
Is this an eyesore to you?
Our bedding, hanging to dry off our back balcony.
Yesterday, while listening to CJAD, local radio personality Ric Peterson was animating a discussion on the use of clothes lines. His wife wants one, he does not, claiming that they are an “eyesore.” He invited listeners to call in and give their opinion on the issue. I was surprised to hear so many in agreement with him and with the idea that they should be banned. One listener was quite pleased to be living in area where they are simply not allowed.
This offends me on deeply personal level. In the realm of household chores, there is little that is more sensible than hanging your clothing to dry. It reduces your power bills and is better for the environment. It’s what I grew up with and yet, somewhere between my childhood and now, someone came along and and declared the sight of clothes lines to be “ugly.”
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