This Is Me Breathing

Here We Go Again

It seems the TTC are threatening to strike. AGAIN! I had to go back to this last entry to find out when their last work stoppage was. Once again they're citing worker safety as the main issue. Once again, the city is going to pay for this union's demands.

Why is this an issue already? It has only been 2 years! Aren't CBAs generally longer than 2 years? Why do I even bother asking why?

The TTC needs a swift kick in the ass. But here they'll only get BITCH SLAPPED!

Petitions, Petitions, Petitions!

Yesterday I wrote about the cancellation of a couple of cool shows by the CBC. (I know, that sentence sounded weird when I wrote it too.) Well I've just been introduced to a cool website called iPetitions. The idea is simple in its brilliance. Basically it allows people to set up online petitions and invite people to sign them. It's democracy at its best!

I found it because I heard about the Petition to GO Transit for a fare rebate which has almost eleven thousand signatures. After adding my own name to it, I took a look around the site because I thought it was a pretty cool idea. I was considering beginning a petition of my own to save MVP and JPod. But first, on the off-chance that one might exist, I thought I'd perform a search. Well I hit pay-dirt. Here are a number of petitions you can sign to save two of Canada's best shows. If you're a fan too, I encourage you to sign all of them.

• MVP:
  • http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savemvp/
  • http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/MVPforlife1/
• JPod:
  • http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/JPod/
  • http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-jpod/
  • http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/CBC_jpod/

Note: Once you sign a petition you will be asked to make a donation to the site. You can skip this step.

Just One More Reason to Hate the Leafs...Oh...And The CBC!

Up until this past season, the only reason I tuned in to the CBC was for three shows; The Hour, HNIC and RMR. But this past season I had two other reasons to watch the Mother Corporation, and they were called MVP and JPod.

The first (MVP) was a guilty pleasure mix of T&A and Canadiana. It had an ambitiously large ensemble cast and more storylines than you could shake a stick at. It was a truly Canadian soap opera and it appealed to both my wife and I for very different (yet oddly similar) reasons. MVP's season finale went to a dark place that I wasn't expecting and it actually made anxious for next season...alas, according to this CBC.ca article, that isn't going to happen now.

JPod was a new dark comedy based on a book by Douglas Coupland of the same name. The cast was young and fresh and it featured a hilarious Alan Thicke in a role that would surprise even the most loyal Growing Pains fan. I especially love the role of the pot-growing mother played by an amazing Sherry Miller. This show was probably the best thing CBC has ever produced and it was attracting a younger audience too! Something that the CBC has problems doing. So, they were a sure lock for renewal right? Wrong.

BTW, CBC also announced that they'd be renewing shows like; The Border, Sophie, Little Mosque On The Prairie, Dragon's Den and This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Now I don't have anything against some of these shows, but really...I think 22 Minutes has had its time don't you? I mean who watches it anymore? Why couldn't they drop it in favour of a new show that might bring in some younger viewers like...say...JPod?

So what does this have to do with the Leafs? Another article on CBC.ca reports that if when the Leafs don't make the playoffs this year it will cost the network $10M in lost revenue. This hit meant that some of the network's newer shows had to go.

So there you have it...the Leafs aren't only hurting Toronto hockey fans, but now it seems their ever-extending reach has touched the lives of Canadian soap opera and dark comedy fans as well.

For not finding a way to keep these two great shows going, and for being the reason for the cancellation of these two shows, I offer both the CBC and the Toronto Maple Leafs respectively, two giant Bitch Slaps!

Leafs' Drafting Record

As I wrote last year, my #1 team used to be the Toronto Maple Leafs. But since then, I've turned my sporting attention to other more serious teams such as the Raptors, Jays, Argos and Penguins.

I got a little flack for my stance from some saying that I was nothing but a fairweather fan, a bandwagon jumper to which I responded with a resounding BITE ME!

I think I'm a bigger fan for wanting what's best for the team, not just sitting back and watching them screw things up at every turn and accepting it blindly.

Well, on the surface, it seems that the team is finaly beginning to take the steps necessary to affect real change. They fired their GM and are in the process of finding a replacement. They're saying all the right things and even seem to be surrendering to the idea that perhaps sneaking into the playoffs isn't what's best for this team right now. Maybe they need to lose before they can win.

Now I'm not saying I'm completely back on the Leafs' bandwagon, but I am watching with interest, if not much suspicion. I'm not 100% sure they've finally opened their eyes, but I'm willing to watch as they stumble upon the truth. That this organizatin has been poorly run for many, many, MANY years.

Case in point:

Recently I've stumbled upon a podcast titled Leafs Central...at Lunch this is a group of your typical battered Leaf fan wives banded together to create a weekly podcast about their favourite team. Now despite their obvious bias, I'm enjoying listening to their show—more for the fact that I'm interested in the whole podcasting process but also because I find their brand of loyalty a little more refreshing than the blatant onair ass-kissing done by the good folks on AM 640. Probably because the guys from the podcast say what they want when they want without worrying about interference from MLSE.

At any rate, the guys fromt he pocast mentioned the website MyNHLDraft.com which peaked my interest so I took a look. As I was browsing through it, I began to see some of the Leafs picks in past drafts and what I found interesting are the players they didn't pick but could have!

I've Been Tagged

I haven't been posting much lately because I've decided to go for quality over quantity—and if you believe that, I've got some swamp land in Florida that may interest you.

I feel especially bad because last month I was tagged by Procrasto and I haven't held up my end of the deal. So I'm here to rectify the matter.

Here are the rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you
  Already done
• Post the rules on the blog
  Gee, this is easy
• Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself
  1. I'm Acrophobic, that means I'm afraid of heights. I don't much care for ladders, although I'll climb one as far as I think I can get away with only a twisted ankle if I fall off. I've never been on a rollercoaster and you couldn't pay me enough to get on one. Although I don't mind flying—on an airliner—I'm not sure how well I'd fare in a smaller plane.
  
  2. When I was very young, I was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta which means my bones were weaker than those of your typical person. If you recall the film Unbreakable, the character played by Samuel Jackson had the same affliction, although mine isn't quite as severe a case. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time with a cast on either one of my arms (and in a couple of occasions on both). For the pat 17 years I'd managed to stay break-free up until this past summer when I fell and shattered my kneecap. As a result of my condition, I never learned to skate or ski as a kid, which in Canada puts me at a slight disadvantage in terms of winter entertainment.
  
  3. In high school I hated reading. I did everything in my power to avoid reading books. For book reports at school I would either read the Cole's Notes, watch the movie if it was available, or fake it. One of the few books I remember reading as a kid was Bridge To Terabithia, which I loved and read more than a couple of times. You'd think that that book would have led me to read more, but it didn't. A couple of years ago, while commuting to work on the train I noticed all of these people reading The Da Vinci Code. That got me curious to find out what the big deal was. One day at my buddy's cottage I picked up a copy of it that he had laying around and I began reading it. I got half-way through before the weekend was out. When I got home, I bought my own copy and finished it. I have read 74 novels in the past 2 years. Most of them fiction. I've written about all of them here.
  
  4. I'm a fan of puzzles. Especially crosswords. I can complete most Monday-Thursday crosswords in the Sun or Star newspapers, but I have trouble completing the Friday editions and the NY Times crosswords. Don't get me started on those cryptic crosswords. I just don't get them.
  
  5. Even though I was born and raised in Canada, my first language was actually Portuguese. That's because my parents were fresh off the boat when they had me. Both worked full-time so I was basically raised by television and because of it, I learned English quite proficiently before I even began kindergarten. As a kid, English quickly became my stronger language and as a result, I was sent to Portuguese school every Saturday morning for 6-7 years which I hated because I wasn't able to watch the Saturday morning cartoons. At the school, I learned grammar, history and geography. Sadly, since moving from my parents' home, my Portuguese has gotten progressively worse.
  
  6. I've got a horrible memory. Throughout elementary and into early high school, I coasted by on a good short-term memory. I wasn't an especially hard-working student and I always left my studying to the last minute but managed to achieve good grades with little effort. As I entered the last couple of years of high school, things changed. I was actually required to work at my grades and as a result they faltered a bit. I actually earned my first and only failing grade in my OAC year. By then I didn't really care because I knew I wasn't going to University. Since then, my memory has gotten progressively worse, especially my short-term memory.That's why it's good that I'm married, because now my short-term memory has a name, Tanya.
  
  There you have it...
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
  This isn't so random, but here you go anyway.
  Mike Boon
  2Shay
  NhiCaps
  Derry
  Buffalo Mike
  SoccerMom
• Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
  On my way to do that right now.

Might As Well Go For The Record

Yes this is another post about the snow in Toronto. But I'm not going to take the usual stance as some other bloggers. I'm not going to say how sick I am of the shovelling and the snow blowing. I'm not going to joke about how I hate Al Gore for shoving the global warming BS on us while we're enjoying suffering through the snowiest winter in the GTA in 41 years.

Think about that...the last time we had this much snow, the Leafs were Stanley Cup champs! That's a loooong time!

In fact, I'm going to say the opposite...I want MORE snow! 17.8 centimeters more, to be exact. Why?

Because then at least we can say that this year was a record-setting winter. In 1938-39 207.4 cm fell on the city. That is the standing record. We are less than 20 cm away from breaking that record. That's just one more good storm!

If we don't hit the record, all of this work will be for nothing! May as well go for it. After all, no one remembers second place.