Even though making fun of people and bitching about things are two of my greatest skills, I don't always enjoy doing it. Sometimes I hear about things so inane and stupid that I feel compelled to write about them even though I sort of dread it. Think of it like a movie reviewer going to see Meet The Spartans; they know it will be awful, but that's what they do (and yes they get paid while I don't, so you should appreciate my efforts even more). Sometimes I hear a story that I want to write about even though I hate it.
Today's entry is one of those. Several Toronto news outlets were straining themselves for various Elvis jokes today to celebrate local dork Suresh Joachim who just set a world record by impersonating Elvis for 55 straight hours.
Bad enough that Joachim's life is pointless enough for him to blow 55 hours on this fruitless exercise, but this marks the 53rd time he's set a completely pointless, worthless record.
I've never followed it closely enough to pinpoint when it happened, but there's no doubt that the Guinness Book of World Records has descended so far past the point of irrelevance that it couldn't catch a bus back to that point, and Suresh Joachim's resume illustrates that fact.
The father of two holds the following records:
* Continuous ironing: 55 hours, 5 minutes
* Balancing on one foot: 76 hours
* Continuous TV watching: 69 hours
* Non-stop crawling: 56.62 kilometres
One thing Joachim does not hold:
* A JOB
Any entity that lauds 69 hours of TV-watching or ironing obviously has no credibility at all. Why? Because any worthless idiot could do that. Many people probably have done it, but they don't want to brag about it because at least they recognize what a non-achievement it is. Why reward a moron who spent six days setting a record for escalator-riding (Joachim again)?
The Guinness Book still celebrates worthwhile and interesting records, but it's also polluted with stupid shit. Case in point: I went to the Guinness page and typed in "fastest." Do I get Olympic sprinters? Racehorses? No, I get crap like "fastest furniture" – some idiot driving a motorized sofa. It does have stuff like a dog that was trained to open a car window, which is kind of cool. But it's mostly trash.
It's not that hard to set a record for driving a motorized sofa or continuous ironing, because your only competition are losers. As long as you're creative enough, it's not hard to set a world record. My next blog entry will cover my record-setting attempt for Longest Time Spent Holding Down The Semicolon Key On A Black Keyboard While Facing East and Wearing Sunglasses In Toronto.
I was almost prepared to give Joachim a free pass today when I saw a glancing mention to how he does this to raise awareness for suffering children around the world. But in glancing over 10 newspaper articles about this idiot, I saw one quick mention of his cause. It smacks for of a justification for his being a total oxygen-bandit.
Much more prominent is the fact that he's really just a shameless attention whore.
He made his own wedding into a ridiculous record circus by having 79 bridesmaids, 79 groomsmen and the world's longest bouquet. Too bad you can't measure something like World's Most Tolerant Bride.
He's also amazingly deluded, somehow fancying himself an inspiring and impressive hero.
"God created everyone with the same talents. But so many don't like to try in case they fail," he told the Toronto Star. "People can achieve anything but they have to bear the pain."
No, most people don't like to try watching 69 hours of TV or 84 hours of drumming because it's a stupid fucking waste of time and we have better things to do. Yes, people can achieve anything. But most people apply themselves to achieving something that's not completely worthless.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Adventures in bias and misappropriation
As much as I enjoy my job, I must say that the responsibilities are heavy. Being a journalist is sometimes taxing, but being a CBC journalist is even more so. Why? Because aside from the Nazis and the Bush administration, I can't think of any other employer for which every single employee is taken to task for the perceived sins of the group. At any given time, in any social situation, I can expect to be harassed because of the CBC's obvious liberal (or conservative) bias, its pro- (or anti-) Israel stance and just how it generally has no credibility and wastes a billion dollars of taxpayer money per year.
It's unfortunate that CBCWatch died, but there are the ever-vigilant, ever-incisive, not at all hysterical and ignorant goons at places like the National Post and Smalldeadanimals.com who have us all figured out. Their ludicrous-sounding theories have never really caught on, but I gotta tell you: it's all true. The guilt has finally eaten away at me, and I must confess: the CBC truly is a shamefully biased white elephant that deceives Canadians and gleefully wastes their money.
I quit my job there today and as a form of public confession, I offer my work diary from last week as a heartfelt apology to all Canadians. My hubris has come back to haunt and embarass me.
MONDAY
Mondays are none too difficult here. After two days off, our overlords worry that we may have forgotten our secret mandate, so we spend most of the day in political re-education. It's never boring though; since the CBC steals millions of dollars from Canadians, there's always some to spare for making propaganda films.
Today's movie was like Leni Riefenstahl meets A Clockwork Orange. Images of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives juxtaposed with rats, nuclear explosions, dead bodies and other chaos with ominous music in the background (soundtrack highlights at 1:30).
Following that are clips from various action movies, with Stéphane Dion's head edited onto the heroes' bodies. He saves children from gruesome deaths, stops forest fires, saves the world, etc… and the taxpayer-funded production values are amazing, lemme tell ya.
A typical indoctrination sessions takes around six or seven hours, including group chants, lie-detector tests and an uplink to the CBC's computerized hive-mind (via various cables that hook directly into our brains). Those get pretty exhausting, so we don't have to work too much after that. Just run a couple of stories propogating the lies of climate change and brazenly slandering the Conservatives, and I call it a day.
TUESDAY
Today I was making a run to Tim Horton's, and asked the folks in my section if they wanted anything. I took a multiple coffee and food orders. As the list grew, I said, half-joking, "Woah people, I can't afford all of this! I'm just a CBC employee."*
Jaws dropped, eyes widened, and everyone disintegrated into uncontrollable laughter. Tears flowed, farts broke out and everyone tore up at my expense for several minutes.
When finished, my boss took me aside and explained.
"We get a billion dollars a year from the taxpayers! We don't pay for anything with our own money!"
We took a brief walk down the hall to a plain closet I'd often walked past and ignored. He opened it up, revealing shelves piled high with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. He handed me five, took five or six for himself and shut the door. I noticed no lock on the door and he explained that there's no need for security. "We're all entitled to that cash," he told me. "If we run out, we can always extort more from the taxpayers."
In all, he gave me $19,000 for a quick run to the coffee shop. I was strictly cautioned not to come back with any of it either. So I tipped the cashier $900, went to Steve's Music and bought myself a guitar (I don't play guitar, but what the hell), then spent the rest on bottles of Dom Perignon, which I threw at homeless people for a few minutes.
I came back and walked straight into a money fight in my office. People were running and ducking as bundles of cash were thrown about. Looking into my boss' open office, I saw him making origami figures and lighting a cigar with hundred-dollar bills.
*For the record, I make $10,000 a week to work from home ($15,000 if I come to the office), with bonuses for extra Liberal bias.
THURSDAY
I stayed home today to re-read The Communist Manifesto, then watch some Michael Moore movies and brush up on the general socialist/communist/liberal attitude that all Fort Dork employees must have.
Oh, and I drank two bottles of Château Mouton Rothschild Pauillac ($610 a bottle, using public funds, natch).
FRIDAY
CBC employees don't work on Fridays! Listen, Johnny Taxpayer, you're lucky I even worked three days this week!
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Torts of all sorts
Canadians have long obsessed over Americans. Many of us love to hate the U.S. and we spew our maple-flavoured vitriol at it every chance we get. Of course, Americans don't care much about this, and not just because we're just one of a plethora of countries that despise the Greatest Country in the World©.
Neatly coupled with our U.S.-hatred is the eternal national debate about what it means to be Canadian. We love to talk about the Canadian identity and what that is. As a country, Canadians are probably even better at navel-gazing than we are at hockey.
Of course, you put those two together and what do you have? A nation of people who are scared to death that they're like Americans. We'll deny it to the grave, but every day, we become more and more like them.
It's most obvious in our popular culture, where recent years have seen us produce staggeringly original products like Canadian Idol, MVP (Desperate Housewives + hockey = CanCon!) and Are You Smarter Than a Canadian Fifth Grader? Still no word on the premiere dates for CSI: Regina and The Canadian Bachelor, but it's only a matter of time.
But now we're striking out in newer, dumber directions. Saskatchewan native Sandra Bergen has struck a new blow in the war against personal accountability by successfully suing her drug dealer after she overdosed on cystal meth, went into a coma and experienced lung, heart, kidney and liver failure.
She doesn't have to point out that she suffered brain failure as well, since that's obvious.
Lost in this whole carnival of the inexplicable is how someone so stupid managed to convince a judge that she's deserving of damages.
Bergen, a self-confessed alcoholic who was also a pot and cocaine aficionado at the time of her overdose, apparently also experienced a complete loss of self-awareness somewhere along the way.
“I have gotten sober. I think that’s taking responsibility for my actions," she told CTV."I don’t think I should have to take responsibility for both of our actions. I think he should meet me half way."
CTV's cameraman was immediately hospitalized after choking on a cloud of irony.
I won't waste much more space commenting on the non-existent merits of the case, as they should be obvious to anyone capable of logical thought. And as much as Bergen may be a reprehensible crybaby and hilariously naïve idiot, the fault lies more with a court system that even hears this cases. If I drive drunk, drive into a building and sue the landlord, it's just me being stupid. But once a court agrees to acknowledge my lawsuit, our entire legal system becomes stupid as well.
Bergen, of course, would deny she's stupid. Writing on her website, she notes that her multiple organ failure escaped one vital area. "My brain still works good," she says.
To its credit, the criminal courts refused to hear Bergen's case, meaning it has far more credibility than the civil courts. It also employs something called logic, which poor victimized Bergen doesn't get.
"The criminal law didn't see me as a victim in this case, they just seen (sic) me as another drug addict," she told CBC-TV.
Bergen channels Stella Liebeck?
Aside from invading a Middle Eastern country, this trend of ridiculous lawsuits is the most insidious way we could more closely resemble the U.S. Since 1992, the whole country has become obsessed with lawsuits, multi-billion-dollar torts often based on amazingly stupid claims.
Of course, the whole thing started with 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, a New Mexico resident who won a $2 million in a civil suit against McDonald's after spilling scalding coffee into her lap.
Liebeck has been continually derided for opening the floodgates of stupid lawsuits that has gradually turned the U.S. into one of the most paranoid places on Earth. As authour David Sedaris said, the country's motto has become "You can't say we didn't warn you."
To be fair, Liebeck did get things started, but it's not really her fault. As much as I hate people who blame the media for everything, that's where a lot of the culpability lies. Liebeck actually had a genuine case, but the general public understanding was that some idiot spilled coffee on herself and managed to convince a judge that she deserved some 2 million clams. This convinced the litigious public that courts would accept ridiculous suits and the torts began to pile up.
The concept of tort reform has developed some momentum in the U.S., now that the tort system costs the U.S. government more than $800 billion per year. But look at that number! They let it get that out of control before they started talking about it. Canada can't make the same mistake. We have to prevent more idiots like Bergen from wasting people's time and money because they're accountability-averse.
In yet another staggeringly clueless statement, Bergen trumpeted her victory over her dealer, saying, "He can't go to court now and say 'I'm not responsible.'"
Funny, neither can she. But she did it anyway.
Neatly coupled with our U.S.-hatred is the eternal national debate about what it means to be Canadian. We love to talk about the Canadian identity and what that is. As a country, Canadians are probably even better at navel-gazing than we are at hockey.
Of course, you put those two together and what do you have? A nation of people who are scared to death that they're like Americans. We'll deny it to the grave, but every day, we become more and more like them.
It's most obvious in our popular culture, where recent years have seen us produce staggeringly original products like Canadian Idol, MVP (Desperate Housewives + hockey = CanCon!) and Are You Smarter Than a Canadian Fifth Grader? Still no word on the premiere dates for CSI: Regina and The Canadian Bachelor, but it's only a matter of time.
But now we're striking out in newer, dumber directions. Saskatchewan native Sandra Bergen has struck a new blow in the war against personal accountability by successfully suing her drug dealer after she overdosed on cystal meth, went into a coma and experienced lung, heart, kidney and liver failure.
She doesn't have to point out that she suffered brain failure as well, since that's obvious.
Lost in this whole carnival of the inexplicable is how someone so stupid managed to convince a judge that she's deserving of damages.
Bergen, a self-confessed alcoholic who was also a pot and cocaine aficionado at the time of her overdose, apparently also experienced a complete loss of self-awareness somewhere along the way.
“I have gotten sober. I think that’s taking responsibility for my actions," she told CTV."I don’t think I should have to take responsibility for both of our actions. I think he should meet me half way."
CTV's cameraman was immediately hospitalized after choking on a cloud of irony.
I won't waste much more space commenting on the non-existent merits of the case, as they should be obvious to anyone capable of logical thought. And as much as Bergen may be a reprehensible crybaby and hilariously naïve idiot, the fault lies more with a court system that even hears this cases. If I drive drunk, drive into a building and sue the landlord, it's just me being stupid. But once a court agrees to acknowledge my lawsuit, our entire legal system becomes stupid as well.
Bergen, of course, would deny she's stupid. Writing on her website, she notes that her multiple organ failure escaped one vital area. "My brain still works good," she says.
To its credit, the criminal courts refused to hear Bergen's case, meaning it has far more credibility than the civil courts. It also employs something called logic, which poor victimized Bergen doesn't get.
"The criminal law didn't see me as a victim in this case, they just seen (sic) me as another drug addict," she told CBC-TV.
Bergen channels Stella Liebeck?
Aside from invading a Middle Eastern country, this trend of ridiculous lawsuits is the most insidious way we could more closely resemble the U.S. Since 1992, the whole country has become obsessed with lawsuits, multi-billion-dollar torts often based on amazingly stupid claims.
Of course, the whole thing started with 79-year-old Stella Liebeck, a New Mexico resident who won a $2 million in a civil suit against McDonald's after spilling scalding coffee into her lap.
Liebeck has been continually derided for opening the floodgates of stupid lawsuits that has gradually turned the U.S. into one of the most paranoid places on Earth. As authour David Sedaris said, the country's motto has become "You can't say we didn't warn you."
To be fair, Liebeck did get things started, but it's not really her fault. As much as I hate people who blame the media for everything, that's where a lot of the culpability lies. Liebeck actually had a genuine case, but the general public understanding was that some idiot spilled coffee on herself and managed to convince a judge that she deserved some 2 million clams. This convinced the litigious public that courts would accept ridiculous suits and the torts began to pile up.
The concept of tort reform has developed some momentum in the U.S., now that the tort system costs the U.S. government more than $800 billion per year. But look at that number! They let it get that out of control before they started talking about it. Canada can't make the same mistake. We have to prevent more idiots like Bergen from wasting people's time and money because they're accountability-averse.
In yet another staggeringly clueless statement, Bergen trumpeted her victory over her dealer, saying, "He can't go to court now and say 'I'm not responsible.'"
Funny, neither can she. But she did it anyway.
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