General Chat

Who's the humourless twink (should that be: who are the humourless twinks?) who reported the thead about how the US got to be what it is today?

Perhaps someone managed to uglify the thread after I left to eat and sleep and watch all the fun on the streets of Toronto ... that nobody here has probably noticed ...

Anyone enlighten me?

HUMOR IS LOST ON SOME PEOPLE

I didn't even see it lol was it in the middle of the night?

Can I use "humourless twink" as an insult from now on please?

I noticed you had trouble in Toronto as it was all over my yahoo page when I signed in earlier ... tsk tsk.

But yes, agree with Joy, some people need a sense of humour implant or maybe a removal of their over-sensitivity gland ...

Jill

It was late for you when I posted it, I guess -- don't know how long it survived.

You can read it here, unexpurgated!

http://newsterrorist.wordpress.com/2006/08/04/the-reason-america-
appears-this-way-greg-proops-montreal-comedy-festival-2005/

And there I thought it was kinda pro-England ...

Ms Grumpy, you may have "humourless twink" with my compliments. ;)

Yes, we've had the Black Bloc come to visit us. Some domestic (likely some from Toronto, with reinforcements from Quebec and elsewhere), and some foreign (mainly the US).

And Toronto's Yonge Street has been smashed to bits, the store windows anyhow. And a few cop cars burned, and the like.

We're waiting for some official statements before passing judgment on the police, e.g. One theory, which I find quite credible, is that a few old cop cars and a school bus were deliberately planted in harm's way to provide distractions for the obnoxious "disaffected youth" bent on mayhem.

My favourite bit so far is the three individuals who emerged from a sewer via a manhole in the downtown area this morning to find some cops there to arrest them. Don't know whether that was just carefully planned, or the cops just struck it lucky.

I'm willing to give the cops a fair bit of credit here for knowing who they were needing to keep an eye on and knowing what they were doing. The flying squads of Black Bloc, though -- at one point there seem to have been four separate groups of 50-100 roving about, doffing and donning their black outfits and balaclavas in between -- did make it difficult for them to react.

If they were making the point that their job was to protect the G20 site and people, and they couldn't be expected to protect storefronts throughout downtown Toronto at the same time, I'm with them. The thing should never have been held here, and the $1.2 billion spent on it should come out of the Conservative Party's pocket.

That means my info about Australian Culture has also gone missing. Blast and bother to the humourless twink.

Now for a news item from my part of the world.

Two men were arrested in a suburban street after police followed a trail of cannabis. It appears these fellows were pushing a green wheelie bin full of the substance between two houses. When the police tracked them to one house they found hydroponics equipment. They then followed the trail of green material to another house where they found a similar hydroponics set up. The two men will appear in court at a later date.

And yes we too are hearing all the news about the G20 conference.

This is the latest info we have about it.

Police and anti-G20 protesters engaged in tense — and at times violent — confrontations and standoffs in several parts of downtown Toronto for a second day on Sunday, with 562 people now under arrest.

Twice on Sunday, the makeshift G20 police detention centre on Eastern Avenue in the city's east end emerged as a flashpoint between police and protesters.

At mid-afternoon, police in riot gear began partially surrounding a group of bicyclists who had first staged a protest through downtown demanding more rights for cyclists.

For a while outside the centre, the cyclists called for the release of the detainees, saying "Let them go, let them go."

Police guard the entrance to the detention centre on Toronto's Eastern Avenue, where officers clashed with protesters. (CBC)
Previously at the same location, police fired at least half a dozen rubber bullets, arresting several people. The confrontation began when an estimated 150 protesters started staging a peaceful gathering while police in riot gear looked on.

At one point, plainclothes police arrived, entered the crowd and began to arrest several people.

"They knew who they were looking for," said the CBC's Bill Gillespie. "These are trained police snatch squads using intelligence on finding suspected troublemakers



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/06/27/g20-toronto-protest.html#ixzz0s5hIOTO0

It must be humourless twink weekend then! Sue's 'Help us to help you' thread was whooshed last night.

As GR gave her permission to start it and it is made up of mostly [as Frank so lovingly puts it] 'old fogies', chatting about life in general, why would it be deleted?

Would humourless twink own up please?


Cx

And AuntyS, I'm sure you're not hearing much about the 10,000 (official estimate, i.e. under-count) people -- the Canadian Labour Congress, Oxfam, you name any of the dozens of legitimate "civil society" organizations -- who marched to call for more money for maternal health initiatives (and for the vile right-wing Canadian government to abandon its ideological right-wing refusal to fund abortion services and thus help to save the lives of the tens of thousands of women who die of botched abortions every year worldwide), and for action on climate change, etc. etc., while the goons were smashing windows.

To give our own media credit, and particularly the privately-owned and often too Conservative CTV, they made that point constantly: that thousands of people demonstrated peacefully for important causes with none of the fire-setting and window-smashing having anything to do with them, and merely detracting from their message.

I was actually one of the organizers of the very first ever (anywhere) counter-summit to a G7 summit. The demonstration part, which I was in charge of, got a notice in the New York Times as having gone off without violence. ;)

It was me- I am still very upset about you making fun of my UTE!


xxxxx mick

I knew it. Just wanted the humourless twink in question to fess up!

Of course ... it wasn't the vehicle I was making fun of ...

;)

I did not connect Janey's post with the magnificent Aussie ute.

I thought the article was alluding to Americanized rust buckets which no self respecting Oz male would be caught dead in.

And I still believe there was historical truth in the wayward humour of the origins of the US.

Oh, you just missed where I made that dreadful sweeping generalization about morons driving pickups and pickups being driven by morons. ;)

1227491

So you agree??

What's the earthquake situation like in Oz, anyhow? Or does having sharks and crocs and bushfires exempt you from that particular part of nature's horror show?

A "ute" is one of those particularly horribly ugly things that's really a car with part of it cut out, right? A girly pickup truck, in other words ...

Janey, I rather think that UTE is a contraction of the more widely known Utility, or multi purpose vehicle,(MPV) as in a similar vein are rv's suv's,and so on.......Bob

I know what "ute" it is, Bob, but nuh uh. I know my antique Aussie vehicles. ;) I've seen Flying Doctors at least twice through!

http://www.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=ute+australia&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

The new ones are more universal-looking, but the original ones are those chopped-up snub-nosed looking car things.

Some classics:

http://www.moparts.org/moparts/picture/ute/ute.html

Here we are, finally remembered the name of the one I know -- it was a Ford Falcon. We had 'em here in NA as well, which is where I first found them the ugliest thing I'd ever seen on four wheels.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugo90/1088550318/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/velden/4148283861/

http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Ford%20Falcon%20%28Australia%29/
http://www.goauto.com.au/mellor/mellor.nsf/story2/F03B934415CD0AEFCA256D1F001C3CA7

and every self respecting aussie (and northerner over here) knows that they have to be dirty, never washed or polished!

We invented the UTE of course.

Did I ever tell you that I was in Flying Doctors?
(The episode about the outback Bachelors & Spinsters ball-
which was actually filmed at the Heidleberg Town Hall of all places))

xxxx mick

What was that awful US television series where they drove one of them? It (the car thing) had its own name even, I think. There was a woman who wore very short shorts, and some guy called "the general" or some such ... Never watched it myself, you see!

edit - believe it or not, I just googled

"the general" television series "hot pants"

and I found it. Third in the results list. The Dukes of Hazard.

Yes you did tell me, Mick. I was duly impressed. And I probably told you that Flying Doctors was produced by one of our own Cdn corps, which owned Nine West. ;)

So you been working for us, you been. For the Aspers of all people, ew.