Stop the Presses: Going to “War” over Boobs… Really???

I found this post sitting in my draft folder from February 23rd, 2012.  I’m not sure why I never finished it and posted it, to be honest, but considering the topic – boobs – and the key person here, German figure skater Katerina Witt, I felt it was too good to go into the trash bin.  Where else can you find something completely out there from which I have a personal story to tie in?!?

So I apologize for the lack of current relevance in this post…

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The original post:

Forget war, hunger, death, famine, recession, subways, and all the talk around Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s weight… All of that is nonsense when you have a news story like this one I read about today via numerous sources.

The Brits and the Germans are on the verge of war…

This war is being fought over former Olympic figure-skating champion, Katerina Witt’s cleavage.

Oh yes.

Her boobs.

As an aside, I actually met Katerina back when I was 17-years-old.  One of my many jobs was working with my sister in the concession stand at the then North York Centennial arena (the snack bar for you non-arena folks) – for the City of North York, and Katerina and Brian Boitano were there practicing.  The Toronto Maple Leafs used to practice at Centennial arena too – different story here too…

Witt was incredible looking in person.  Tall, very fit and very busty.  Very nice too.  I was too shy to approach her for an autograph on her way out of the arena after one of her practices, so I convinced the arena maintenance staff to get it for me and according to them, she happily obliged.  The autograph came back like this; “To Warren and his sister”  Love Katerina.  Between the front of the arena and the change rooms in the back and after working there for 2 or 3 years, they forgot my sister’s name.  She was not impressed.

I still have it.

But I digress…

From all that I have read and heard, there is a “war” going on because the former Olympic figure skater has been wearing low-cut tops as a judge on a popular U.K. show called Dancing on Ice which has not been sitting well with the British tabloids who have been all over her.  In response, German newspapers have responded by publishing photos of busty British models, like Katie Price and Jodie Marsh.

It seems that there is a belief in Germany that the Brits have insulted Witt, forcing her to show too much cleavage, much in the same way the British Sun newspaper has the page 3 girl topless and over inflated woman like Katie Price are adored.

Witt won two Olympic gold medals in the 1984 and 1988 and later posed for Playboy.

In case this was not silly enough, British viewers took to Twitter to tweet that Witt’s cleavage and figure-hugging attire was distracting to viewers.  Since that outburst Witt started appearing on the show wearing much less-revealing clothing and she said she was not ordered to cover up, but rather it was a personal choice.  “Of course you read the comments,” she said.

Pictures below are Witt from the show and Price from… Somewhere.

What do you think?  Too distracting?

Related articles

• Jordan going for fourth boob op (mya.co.uk)
• Are muscles and big boobs ‘in’? (mya.co.uk)
• Is Katie Price planning a bigger bosom? (mya.co.uk)

Thursday Thirteen – TV Time!

Thirteen TV shows that my wife will absolutely not watch;

Image via Wikipedia

1. The Weather Network – “If you want to see the weather, go outside”.

2. Reality TV – “It’s stupid because it’s not real, it’s scripted”.

3. Soap Opera’s - ”They’re stupid too”.  

4. Sports

5. News – “Why watch it when you can live it”.

6. Scary TV – like those shows where there are dead people eating other dead people and it looks like a poorly dressed zombie eating a very rare piece of meat.

7. Music videos – no Much Music, no MTV, no music TV stations.

8. Food network – “I’d rather cook than watch someone else cook”.

9. Parades – She wouldn’t get caught dead watching those…

10. Wrestling – “No comment, but wrestling is stupid”.

11. Award Shows – No Grammies, no Oscars, no Golden Globes… No red carpets, nothing.   

12. Anything we have to pay for (aside from actual cable) like PPV - “We pay enough for TV without having to pay more for shows”.

13. The SyFy channel – Not surprising since this girl has only seen one Star Wars movie – GASP.  I know!

So if I want to watch any of these I’m watching them alone.

What stations are you addicted to and which would you remove from your TV if you could?

Non-cartoon TV shows for a 4-year-old and 6-year-old

What kind of non-cartoon TV shows would you say are age appropriate for a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old boy (or girl)?

I don’t like them watching anything violent and they have no interest in watching sports on TV, save for the occasional time I see that Linus has turned on fishing.  They don’t get much TV, they don’t need or have time for much TV, and my wife and I have always thought about what shows are age appropriate for the boys, so that 6-year-old Linus is not always watching shows for little kids, and 4-year-old Stewie can watch something he will enjoy.  Other than Treehouse, TVO kids or sometimes Teletoon. what is out there?

At this point in time, we pretty much agree that Full House is a wholesome, comedy that Linus could watch.   It’s not a cartoon, and since my 4-year-old can actually remove himself from the trance TV puts on his brother, I cannot see Stewie being ready for this show … yet, but if he watched it could do no harm.

My wife actually went ahead and set the PVR to capture a “few” episodes of Full House to show to Linus. I went to see if one of my shows had taped and it was at that point when I realized that Full House is on TV like, 15 times a day… Every day – so she filled the PVR in 2 weeks.  CRAP!

By total accident. however, I did find a couple of TV shows that 6-year-old Linus LOVES.

He was totally engaged in, and even cheered for the people on TV for the following two shows;

Wipeout and Man vs Food.

In Wipeout, for those of you who have not seen the show, is a race through a crazy obstacle course, in water, in which the participants get spun, flipped, punched, pushed and knocked off. The actual wipe-outs are awesome. The show makes me laugh and Linus thought it was the best. He sits on the edge of his seat, laughing and rooting for the participants. He actually thought the show was live, and queried why at 8pm it was light – and warm – on the TV but cold and snowy here.

He asks every night if we can watch Wipeout. He even knows it is on channel 54 on Rogers cable.

The other show him and I watched that he loved was Man Vs. Food. The premise of the show is that host Adam Richman travels across America sampling some of the best cuisine he can find. He also finds some of the biggest orders of food and tries to eat the entire dish.

In this one specific show that we watched the host went into the kitchen to see some of the fabulous meals cooked in a Hawaii restaurant which specializes in traditional cuisine.  One of the items they are famous for is blueberry pancakes – super-duper sized.  3 giant pancakes, each one the size of a large pizza, covered with a quart of blueberries on each level and 3 pats of butter and syrup.  Only 3 people have ever finished this meal.

Linus and I watched with intrigue at his attempt to eat the whole meal, including with shock and awe, when he ordered and ate an order of bacon to cut the repetitive taste. 

I thought he was going to eat the whole thing.

No way, said Linus.  He won’t even eat 3/4ers of it. 

He barely at 3/4ers of it.

Watching it with Linus was fun.  He rooted for the host, talked about eating pancakes himself, and was in awe that only 3 people had managed to eat that entire order.

What shows will you let your kids watch, and which shows do they have interest in?

It was a fun show.

Why Do I Blog? Why Do You Blog?

I often wonder why it is that I blog.  I wonder, during the day, if I’m wasting my time with this whole blog thing, and at night, I wonder the same thing, as I’m typing up my posts for the week. Is anyone going to read them? and if someone does, why, and in the end does it really matter? 

I’ve said this before, that I don’t write posts for others… usually… although I have been known to in the past – I won’t make that mistake again.

I try to write my posts with the view that this online journal is going to help me remember key points in my family’s life as we move from day-to-day, kid-by-kid, and event-to-event.  It’s nice to be able to look back and see what we did, for example, for my 1st child’s 2nd birthday, and use that in preparation for my middle child’s 2nd birthday, and still have that online when it comes time for my daughter’s second birthday.

I used to post about events that happened to me at my old job – but that turned out to be a colossal error of judgement as it revealed WAY too much about me and my family and opened up my life for judgement and criticism from those who knew that I blogged.

Going forward I share events and stories with like-minded individuals and use my blog as a forum to talk about me, the father of 3 kids, the husband, the manager, volunteer and human being.

I was content doing this for the people who came to my blog with regularity and maintaining a respectable number of daily readers.

All of this changed last Wednesday – for those of you who read my comments, you would already know – when I was reached out to from a local TV station regarding my interest in participating in a talk show on blogging as a Daddy-blogger.

Initially, I was dead set against the idea but after talking to some friends in the media, I met with the executive producer of this show and we chatted about what it is that I do and why. 

During this 15-20 minute chat, we talked about how I got started blogging, what my challenges are as  a Dad and why I like to blog stuff.  I answered the questions as best as I could and the more we talked the more it came back to me why it is that I do this in the end of the day. 

It’s because I love being a Dad! 

I started because my wife blogged and I loved reading her posts.  She is such a great writer (I miss her posts) and I wanted to have my take on family events too – we see things so differently.  Eventually, I added other topics to my blog, like work, the TTC, municipal events – like the condition of the streets – volunteer activities and my search for a new job.

I found my blog became the repository for everything that happened to me during the day – good and bad – and if you look back at some of my oldest posts, they have little rhyme or reason, as I used this blog for a dumping ground of my emotions. 

Doing that allowed me time to grow emotionally, and as a writer as I would go back and read comments and those comments helped me realize whether I was writing something interesting of something crappy.  The more I wrote my posts to those readers the less I became myself, but the more I wanted comments.  I wanted to be noticed.  I think deep down inside I wanted what some other bloggers I knew about had, like Cheaty Monkey and Redneck Mummy, I wanted to be able to write a post worthy of 30 comments or 200 hits… I wanted to be known.

Then somewhere along the line I realized that being the Dad of 3 kids, with a new job which I love(d), I had been blogging for over 4 years and with little in the way of hits or comments I just enjoyed using this forum to talk about what it’s like being an involved father. 

I was fortunate to have been in a position to have taken off 9 months to be with my first son, 4 months with my second, and yes, one day with my third, but on the weekends, they are mine and in the evenings I take care of their bedtime routine and I would not pass that up for anything in the world.

Sure I find there are times during the day when I wonder why I’m working (obvious reasons – to pay bills) because I just want to be home with my kids.  Yes, we do programs in the evenings and on the weekends, and sure every now and then I am able to walk them to school, be the class parent, or take them for a walk to run errands… I want them to be as involved as possible so when they get older they won’t be afraid to ask for what they want or settle for a job they do not like because they are too hesitant to make a move.

And while I do not have the burden of having to make the big decisions – schools, meals, camps, lunches, or stuff like that as my wife does all of that too much success, I am involved in the conversation regarding these decisions as much as I can.  My wife and I attended 5 or six schools before we chose the one my oldest goes to know and I went with my wife to speak to the principal of the new school that my middle child attends.  We visited camps, arranged sports events and we plan vacations that would be fun for everyone.  I like to be in control but where I cannot, I know my wife will have already done the legwork and spoken to people and will come to me when we’re close so we can seal the deal together and be comfortable that it is the right decision for us and our kids.

I try not to miss parent teacher interviews, I look at homework and often find myself asking my kids how their day was and what they did.  I worry about how they are socializing with their classmates, and between each other.  I worry about how they are to their teachers and try to get them to treat their nanny with the most respect possible.  I worry about how they are going to cope as they grow older. 

My oldest boy is so much like me that I want to watch his development and remind him that to be successful in school and in life he needs to be a little less goofy and a little more serious.  I remember about 6 months ago when he told me that he didn’t know; “When is the right time to be serious and when it’s okay to be goofy”.  I try to teach him.  My middle boy, on the other hand is all my wife and I want him to be a little less intense and a little more outgoing so that he can use his natural smarts to be the best he can be.

So getting back to why it is that I blog… I told this TV station about why I love being a Dad and why I didn’t really want to be on TV because I’m not the worlds’ most articulate guy all the time and at times I wonder if any of these posts even make sense on the screen after I type my garbled mess.  But the more I talked about myself and my enjoyment of fatherhood, I realized I could do this, and if they decided after meeting me that they wanted to give me a shot and have me on, I would do it.  Not for the potential for more hits, or more comments, but hit the opportunity to pass along to anyone that wants to listen why it’s great being a parent and to share some of the things we have encountered as a family and how we moved past them.

Trust me… If it’s going to happen, I’ll let you know…

… Maybe. 

Thursday Thirteen

You may have noticed that I had gone AWOL for a week and a bit, and that was because my family and I took some vacation and I did not take my computer with me.

Sure the urban mummy had her iPad / iPod / laptop, but by the time it came to night time (and we’re talking 9pm) I just needed to take my turn on Jedi vs Sith, then watch some TV before bed. All that fresh air is tiring, you know.

So I thought there was no better way to summarize my vacation than to post the 13 best things I liked about our family vacation, in my Thursday Thirteen.

Buckle up…

Here we go!

13. It was a family vacation. We took our nanny too and headed up to my in-laws cottage for a week. Just us and the lake…

12. The kids got to swim in the lake, pluck out the algae and zebra mussels, and the water level was waist high (for them) about 150 feet from the dock.

11. Linus and his nanny toured the lake in a boat and had a great time rowing back and forth from side to side. Stewie wouldn’t go in the raft, he was afraid, but he had no issues pushing them around the lake for an hour.

10. The most intense sunsets ever! Pink, grey, blue… Beautiful! I should post my pictures…

9. Berry managed to entertain herself for hours a day on a soccer ball and a fisher price stacker that we bought for her in the thrift shop.

8. We laughed until it hurt, cleaning up parts of the cottage. There was some accidents – like unplugging the beer fridge – and there were some expired products which made us howl. KD’98.
As Linus put it, “Mazel Tov and Cinnamon Toast”.

7. The cottage next door has a huge sand box and a bunch of kid’s toys so my kids were able to head over any time they wanted to play.

6. Giant bag of M&M Peanuts… Nuff said. Plus loads of super-fresh produce to eat…

5. Being alone was odd. I forgot what it was like to be alone. When Berry woke up at 5am, I would head into the family room, sit on the couch and watch the sun rise. I was alone, but not able to rest as I was listening for crying or the stirring of one of the boys. Being on-guard like that is something I think every parent has to get used to… There really is very little “down” time when you are a parent.

4. The boys, the nanny and I, went on a really long walk (2 1/2 hours) through the neighbourhood – found some farms – an edamame farm, and a bean farm, as well as a bunch of apple trees. We ate well that day. On the way back we found a hidden covered trail which we took into someone’s backyard and then snuck back onto the street.

3. We saw a Blue Heron… Which is kind of funny because we saw one last year and it was all the kids could talk about for months… They told everyone, and I even remember Stewie standing on a chair at the Mandarin restaurant with his arms hed high over his head explaining to my mother how big this bird is. He was 2 1/2 at the time… Very cute.

So now we see another one and my almost 6-year-old looks at me and casually calls it a seagull… Both buys them walk away. LOL.

2. I buzzed my head! I finally did it… I was fed up with my balding head and need for a hair cut when I found my father-in-law (FIL)’s beard clippers in the bathroom door. 20 minutes later and I had a lot less hair and whole lot of scalp showing. I’m so happy and relieved at how clean it is. Granted, I did not take it all off, but it’s REALLY short. Cool.

1. The highlight of this trip for me was without doubt seeing the expression on the urbanmummy’s face as I finally convinced her to watch some “reality” TV.

There was a show called Property Virgins, I believe and this couple was in Toronto looking for something specific – older, established area, close to work, lots to walk to, and the agent took them to a new condo down on the lake front and they put in an offer on it.

Granted the show generalized the process but they got the condo despite the husband’s protests as to the location, traffic and that it was a condo, not a house.

When I looked at her, she was enthralled with this show – mainly because it was Toronto, however, but this was the first “reality” show I have ever seen her watch.

Once the show ended and before I could turn it off, on came another trainwreck, a show called, “I didn’t know I was pregnant”.

We watched that, laughing and trying to figure out if this show was 100% fact or 100% fiction. Urban mummy’s jaw was dropped open the whole time. She could not believe it. We then watched Hoarders but turned it off before trainwreck II, some show called something like, “I’m 16, pregnant and I didn’t know” came on.

The look of disbelief on her face added to our laughter the rest of the trip.

Ahh, reality TV…

What’s wrong with government Part XVI

Last night in the Urban Daddy household, my wife and I were laying in bed watching this fantastic sitcom called Modern Family, which neither of us had ever come across before.

That afternoon and into the evening my wife had been peddling her wares – home-made beautiful jewelry – at a show not too far from our house. She had a good show which makes all of us happier and we even found this great gift for our boys – home-made capes with a lightening bolt on it, ala Flash Gordon (my favourite super-hero of all time).

We thought the kids would appreciate the capes since every night after their bath, my 3-year-old takes his hooded bath towel, puts it on his head with the rest of the towel draping behind him and tears through the house yelling, “flyer man to the rescue!!!”. He persuaded the 5-year-old to do it too now. These capes should fit in just fine!

Anyways… Are you still with me?

So while watching Modern Family on her new iPad (which she LOVES), I mentioned to her that there was a manager of a team working for the City of Mississauga who had been abusing his staff by duct taping them to the chair, to the floor, and spanking them on the ass and hitting them in the groin.

She looked at me with that face that said, “WTF are you talking about?!?”.

Then I realized she was probably the only person in the Greater Toronto Area who missed out on this story. Or possibly, having had a less than stellar work experience at the government I was just over-sensitive to this story not because of the abuse but because of the fall-out. So typical of government punishment (or lack thereof).

Anyways, I posted both links below – thank you Toronto Star – and I recommend you give them a read.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/mississauga/article/817776–mississauga-employees-duct-taped-abused

Essentially, a City government manager in Mississauga has been duct-taping and spanking employees for 5 years?!? Someone finally used a cell phone to video the abuse, showed HR, and from there the news of these practices broke.

And, of course, in typical government union fashion, the manager STILL works there!!! I actually believe he is on sick leave or stress leave right now.

Personally, I feel that the manager and any of the HR staff who I’m sure had known about this for a while (and any staff who knew but didn’t speak up) should be severely reprimanded or fired.

It’s so sad it’s laughable…

But now the police are investigating the matter and there is a good chance that this manager will be charged.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/mississauga/article/818334–police-probe-duct-tape-hazing-at-mississauga-workplace

I’m sure you, like myself, is reading this story, or heard about it already and are shaking your head in disbelief.

It happens!

People in unionized jobs don’t want to give up their perks, whatever they may be; pay, preferential working hours, no pressure to perform, great maternity / paternity leave benefits… There are many positives about unionized government jobs. As well, there are many reasons not to complain about harassment and they include the perception that if you tell HR or your union rep that you will be labelled and therefore never be promoted or move up in the organization, or probably worse for most people, you will be ridiculed, harassed, and made fun of. Your clique will no longer hang out with you and you will be shunned. It’s like high school in that to survive in the government you need your posse to watch your back.

It took me MANY years to realize that the fear of lack of promotion was the least of my worries and I had to speak up and ultimately get out of that poisoned environment in order to be happy.

In the private sector if a manager did that or even joked about it, they would be fired, sued and unemployable. Justice is swift and accurate.

The City of Mississauga needs to wake up to the environment that allowed this abuse to occur and not be mentioned. The people that lived it must be punished to understand that it is NOT okay to keep this to themselves and the manager who carried out these acts MUST be fired, without pension IMMEDIATELY and not given a golden handshake or given the option to resign.

A clear message must be sent to all current managers in government – any and all levels – that this type of behaviour will not be tolerated.

And for the government staff who think they can now scream abuse or harassment when your manager questions your workload… You need to sit back, zip your mouth and understand what real harassment is.

It was this.

Random Musings

My 5-year-old lost his first tooth Thursday. So that night the tooth fairy paid him a visit. By midnight he was awake and checking under his pillow for the chocolate money he was expecting. Half asleep he missed the fact that his tooth was gone and an envelope with a toonie in it was there in it’s place.

He was not happy.

He wanted the tooth and chocolate money like his classmate… Oh well. He’ll have to write that into the letter he left under his pillow with the tooth for #2, which will be falling out any second…

And fall out it did… Kind of. His other bottom front tooth was really loose all day Sunday and he was afraid to eat, so I convinced him to let me look at in the bathroom.

I grabbed a kleenex, convinced him to let me look at it, at which point I wiped his lip a few times so as to not scare him, then slipped the kleenex over the tooth and plucked it out of his mouth.

So now missing his 2 bottom teeth, he wrote a note to the tooth fairy again tonight asking for chocolate money and that is what he got under his pillow.

I can’t wait until he wakes up.

This thought just popped into my head:
Please, for the love of G-d, do not wear a grey suit and brown shoes!!!

About the weekend:
Trying to plan weekends while our house is for sale is not fun. We are tired after a long week, but if we stay at home it has to remain and us ready to leave on a moments notice for a showing. Not easy with 3 kids when it’s yucky outside…

Speaking of moving… We have a ton of veggies that the boys and I planted from seed which are getting big and almost ready to plant but we have no house to plant it in. We’re not in the new one until the end of June which will be too late and we’re not going to (hopefully) be in this one all summer. Sigh. Compounding this problem is the fact that the bean stalks are already producing beans… They need to be moved!

My 3-year-old brought home a “pet” from school. A worm. It came in a little plastic container with a tiny hole in the top and an instruction sheet. This “pet” was sitting on the kitchen counter.
This morning I pushed wormy back from the edge of the counter and as I stepped back I felt something hard and a little squishy under my heel…
Yup.
Wormy.
He had escaped and was hard as a rock.
With 2 boys staring at it in horror I scooped up little crispers and put him back in the container with some water.
My wife thinks today is the day he gets “released” into the garden… I tend to agree.

Why can’t I find any Blue Jays games on the TV, or highlights on the news? After beating up the division leading Texas Rangers you would think Toronto’s only current team that doesn’t suck (except the Toronto Rock), that they would be all over the news… Very frustrating.

This weekend we had an impromptu garage sale, piggybacking off our neighbours who plastered signs everyone and went wild. In our case we got rid of a ton of crap and took in some $$$ in exchange… Nice!

Why does every episode of Hell’s Kitchen seem to have the same 2 teams on it.  Was there only one season?  If not, this was a really crappy idea…

Too Green for the CBC?

I found out this week that we are too Green for the CBC.  That made me sad.  I was hoping to be a little too green for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but it turns out after many phone and email discussions that we are just too green for them.

Damn.

So what exactly does that mean?

Well, let’s go back a couple days to a tweet I saw on twitter coming from the CBC.  Turns out they were looking for a family to go totally green (read: environmentally friendly, not Kermit the Frog green) for a week or so, while the Copenhagen Conference was going on.  The intent was to show how green or not green the average Canadian family is, and to show ways to make them even more green - in light of these most important talks on the future of the planet.

Upon seeing the post I replied / applied.

And so the discussions began.

Thinking we were not green enough, and knowing we had a brand new baby, I figured we’d be a shoe-in for the TV spot.

But then after a couple days of discussing my family; our committment to recycling, hybrid vehicle, turning the thermostat down at night, running the dishwasher after 10pm when the rates are cheaper, hanging our clothes to dry, looking for local produce first or produce with less packaging, carpooling our kids to and from school, and in a previous life taking public transit to and from work or walking.  Also, bringing our own cloth bags everywhere, re-using and reducing before recycling and all that stuff, it was determined we are too green for this spot.

Damn again.  My kids would have been so cute on TV.

At least we know we are reducing our carbon footprint.

Now I don’t have to worry about getting the house clean for TV, I can go back to looking into a tankless water heater and sealing any leaky windows and doors.

The end of the world must be near…

I think the end of the world is near.  It makes me sad, but I think this is it.  What else could explain the absolute shit that is on TV these days.  Celebrity Rehab, Sex Rehab, Paris Hilton’s BFF, Tila Tequila and fuck, even P. Diddy, or whatever the fuck his name is, has a “reality” show.  It’s all friggin crap.  Hogan know’s best, the Hills, people with 8 kids, 16 kids, 32 kids, geez.  What makes this Tv?  It’s like being at the circus watching the freak-shows. 

Right now on showcase there are 2 men in thongs tied together by a harness in the 69 position and they are pounding the shit out of each other’s ass cheeks.  UGH.  Then the guy drools on the other guys leg.  UGH.  It’s as bad as watching poker on TV.  (turned off after 20 more seconds).

It’s no wonder I just stick to sports, Grey’s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, and a ton of cooking shoes and news.

Please, someone come up with something original!!!

 

Why I try not to watch the news…

North Korea launches a long range missile, they say to launch a satellite, the Japanese and US say it was a test to prove they have capabilities to launch nuclear weapons.

What’s wrong with these countries?  North Korea, Iran, still most of the former USSR, Pakistan, even the US in some ways.  Why do they waste SO much money on weapons instead of helping their citizens educate themselves, and stay healthy.

But not all news is bad…

Yesterday was international pillow fight day.  Seriously…  Geez.

The 127 year old Boston Globe asked its staff to take huge pay cuts or it is going to shut down.  Hmmmm.  Newspapers, already a dying industry… Greed – the cause of this recession… Yup.  Not surprised.

Speaking of dying industries… Air Canada is positioning for yet another bankruptcy filing.  Turns out a company crying poor still has enough money to run commercials with high frequency.  Why do airlines need to advertise???  If I want to go from say Toronto to NJ, I look for the cheapest price, the best times, then look at the carrier.  When I look for a flight I don’t go look for Air Canada first because I saw their ad on TV.  It’s ridiculous.