Shocking, breaking, all-important news from the bowels (sorry) of the Corp:
New toilet seats!
At least in the men’s and (I’m told) women’s washrooms in the CBC.ca area of the Toronto Broadcasting Centre. A quick (and sheepish) tour of other (men’s) washrooms (lots of brackets) indicates a 50-50 mix of white and black seats.
I didn’t notice anything wrong with the old white ones, but some time in the wee (sorry again) hours of last night, they were replaced with very shiny (and slightly cold) black ones. Too shiny, actually – they capture rather clear impressions of the bottoms that came before you.
I asked my colleagues for their theories on this replacement, and here’s what I got:
- They’re cutting down the cleaning schedule to every other day, and needed something that wouldn’t show the dirt
- The seats are cast-offs from the executive washrooms, which have been upgraded to either mahogany or solid gold
- Black & white is more formal. Next they’ll have a bathroom attendant. Or those coin-op machines that offer rip-off cologne and French ticklers
In case you think my blog has hit bottom (sorry, final time), you should know that this is only a tenuous news peg for another, better story of potty politics. It’s a story with a happy ending (Crap. Sorry. Ooops, I did it again.)
Shortly after the lockout ended, CBC employees were greeted with ads in the CBC washrooms. Some sighed and pointed to the omnipresent and inescapable encroachment of advertising. Others decided to fight the power. Here is the story, courtesy of one person who helped spearhead the fight. She writes:
“I thought you might get a kick out of this surprisingly successful and heartening, though small, example of collective protest in action.”
__________
Raising a stink
On the 14th of November 2005, washroom ads were found hanging in the women’s washrooms and some handicap washrooms at various CBC locations across the country.
Horrified employees from every area of CBC responded in indignation in a number of ways. Some sent e-mails to CBC management; some, I’m told, joined together and spoke to the Vice President of English Radio who in turn spoke to Robert Rabinovitch; others turned the ads to face the wall or stuck the ever-helpful hand washing instructions on top of them; others called the media buying agency who placed the ads, complained to the VP, and threatened to boycott the products advertised.
To the surprise and gratification of everyone who let their voices be heard, on the 13th of December we received this e-mail from the Director of Special Real Estate Assignments and Communications, Real Estate Division:
“I just wanted to advise you that management has decided not to continue with the washroom advertising frames initiative. I have spoken with MediaCity (the agency), they have been very accommodating, and will be removing the advertisements and their frames this week - perhaps as soon as this evening.”
We’ll probably never know exactly what led to M. Prud’homme’s e-mail (some think it was CBC’s decision, others have expressed cynicism about this and suggest it was the ad agency who pulled out), but for the record here are some of the exchanges that helped bring about this remarkable decision:
I’m a producer with The National in Toronto and I’m writing to ask you to remove the advertsing from the women’s washrooms. This is an office, a place of business, not a consumer forum for you to exploit. We have a right not to be bombarded with ads when we use employee washrooms.
Secondly, the ads themselves are offensive. “The juiciest thing in the office???” Defend that one for me please. I can tell you there’s not a woman in our office who’s not offended by this exploitation.
M. Prud’homme’s standard reply was:
I’ve received your e-mail expressing your frank views. The following will provide you with additional information and a bit more context.
The placement of advertisements in washrooms-men’s (to be installed in the weeks to come) as well as women’s-is an initiative to generate revenue for CBC/Radio-Canada. All proceeds from this initiative will go to the corporate reserve account where they will be used for the benefit of programming. Washrooms at Montreal MRC, Toronto TBC, Ottawa OBC, Quebec City and Vancouver will have a single 13-inch by 17-inch advertising frame installed. Some larger washrooms will have a maximum of two frames.
We expect the majority of ads to promote cultural events and their corporate sponsors, and the agreement we have with MediaCity (the company that was selected to install and maintain the advertising frames) allows local CBC/Radio-Canada communications group to veto ads it deems inappropriate. The initial ad has already been replace in light of comments received.
I know this information probably won’t change your opinion, but I hope it will help you understand the objective of the initiative and the measures we have taken to provide us with as much flexibility as possible.
Yours truly,
Ronald Prud’homme
Directeur, Affectations spéciales et communications
Division immobilière
In response, a group of 17 men and women from The National wrote:
Dear Ronald,
We fully understand the “context” of your decision to put advertisements in our washrooms. The endless stream of corporate decisions to sell off parts of this public company in the name of programming are well known to us. While we cannot do much to stop many or most of those efforts toward privatization, we believe we can, and must, prevent the selling off of us, the employees, in your money-grubbing endeavour.
We absolutely refuse to be the captive audience, the eyeballs, the customers, for you to deliver to advertisers.
In light of your intransigence on this topic, we must inform you that we will take our complaints directly to the media company, Media City, and to all of the advertisers (in the form of boycotting their products).
In sum, we don’t want the money. We want, and demand, respect, and freedom from corporate exploitation.
Yours truly,
The women and men in 4B
Here’s the text of some other letters:
First, you got rid of the cafeteria. Today, as I settled into another week at work, I was stunned to see the latest cash-grab: ads in the washroom. Is CBC really so hard up for money that it has to offer up its employees as captive consumers? I expect to see ads when I leave my work area to get a coffee or lunch. But when I take a necessary break just down the hall, still thinking about my work, it’s jarring and distracting to see a garish advert for chewing gum. I cannot overemphasize how strongly I object to these ads and to the idea that CBC sees me not just as a valued worker but as a set of eyeballs to auction off to the highest bidder. I come to work to work, not to be sold a product.
(Upon receipt of M. Prud’homme’s standard reply about the majority of ads promoting cultural events and their corporate sponsors, this writer said: “If chewing gum is a cultural event, I guess I better start building my apocalypse shelter.”)
I understand that your office is responsible for the advertisements in the women’s washrooms of the Toronto Broadcast Centre. I was appalled by this intrusion. We are browbeaten at every turn by people wanting us to spend money on things we do not need. The washroom is a temporary respite from this barrage. Please explain to me (and all of my colleagues who are also dismayed by this commercialism of our workplace) why this has been allowed to happen. Are the men to be tortured too, or is the exclusive privilege of the women of the building?
Dear Mr. Prud’homme,
May I request that you remove the ads that have been installed in the women’s washroom here at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto.
It is offensive to think that we not only have to deal with every single square piece of our public life being visually defiled by advertising, but that we must also face it in one of the few places in our work life where one can have a moment of privacy and visual spareness, is just an insult.
Putting advertising in the women’s bathrooms in the Broadcast Centre in Toronto is totally inappropriate.
Yes the CBC has funding issues, but if putting ads for Trident chewing gum in our bathrooms is viewed as a creative & proactive way of dealing with the corporation’s bottom line than we have a more serious problem than the PCs getting elected.
Please remove them.
Yesterday I was shocked to see that commercial advertising had been put up in women’s washroom in our CBC Toronto building.
I would like to voice my strong disaproval of this practice. I would like to think that our work place would stay free of commercial advertising, keeping it a professional environment conductive to our core business, and would wish not to be bombarded by commercial advertising in places we cannot avoid to visit (the washrooms!).
I hope that you will reconsider the decision of advertising in our building.
Hello there,
I wanted to write to tell you how shocked I was to see advertisements in the washrooms at the CBC. I am familiar with the practice of placing ads in public washrooms and even in school settings, but I can’t understand why they would be installed at the CBC. We are not the same environment as a bar or restaurant, or a public urinal in Union Station. I don’t believe there is a place for that at the nation’s public broadcaster. It seems like whatever revenue generated by this is a small sum compared to the indignity of having ads directed at the corporation’s employees, especially in a company where so many of the employees are independent-thinking journalists.
I hope that the decision to have ads in the washrooms is reversed.
Thanks for listening.
Please forward my email to the correct person(s). I wish to lodge my total disgust for the installation of ads in all the ladies washrooms at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto.
I know that we are trying desperately to be creative in funding but this is just wrong.
We are a publicly funded national broadcaster and it is an embarrassment to me as an employee to have these signs on the wall - as though we were a bar or a restaurant. I can only imagine what guests who come into the building to appear on our shows must think.
This is an insult to our corporate integrity.
(After the decision to remove the ads, this person wrote:
I’ve been feeling very down at the mouth recently because of the many, many changes that have happened here at CBC over the course of the last few years. What has upset me the most is my utter powerlessness to do anything about any of the changes that affect us day to day.
This has brought me hope.
Thank you - to all who said “enough”.)
I’ve grudgingly grown used to seeing the surface of ice rinks and the sides of busses used to promote products, but there are places I hope never to be reminded that, by some people, we’re all just seen as potential consumers. One of them is in my home, and another is at work. Is it so crazy to imagine that I can go to the bathroom, a necessary break in my day, without having this cynical view of the world forced on me?
In your e-mails, you seem to see us as valuable, creative, productive workers. Allow me to do my work without feeling, several times a day, that you see us as much, much less; mere consumers in a world full of stuff.
Please re-consider your decision to allow advertisements in our washrooms.
Dear Mr. Prud’homme,
I would like to express my disgust at seeing advertisements installed in the washrooms of the CBC building, here in Toronto.
When I am in the workplace, I do not want products and brands thrust in my face: it is a violation of my headspace.
I work in radio, a commercial-free zone. Thus, I respectfully request the removal of these obnoxious installations from this most private of spaces - the washroom.
One person wrote to me:
This great news has lifted my spirits. I left a voice mail for Mr. Prud’homme, and said that I felt my privacy had been invaded by these ads in the washrooms, and I could not believe that even with tight budgets at the CBC that the CORP would stoop so low. ‘Trident Splash’ in a washroom……”give me a break”……
On my floor someone placed the hand washing sign over the ads. It wasn’t me!!!
__________
“So,” my friend writes, “WELL DONE, one and all. As one person wrote, “Grassroots organizing works!” It’s lovely to enjoy a moment of collective success.”
Tags: advertising, washrooms, cbc, protest, gorbould
I thought I should do a follow-up on my search engine blog results, because (navel-gazing aside) it tells me a lot about how engines like Google work, and fail miserably. (see: “miserable failure“…)
[Original entry: Prostitutes of Orillia]
The following is a list of the major internet searches that have landed people on my blog. I’ve divided it into two categories - “relevant searches” (the content of my blog may actually be of use to the searcher) and “not very relevant searches” (the surfer won’t likely find my blog of any use at all.)
Then, there are the juicy ones at the end. Hey, stop skipping ahead!
Relevant Searches
An improvement from last week - there actually are some relevant searches. Here are the main ones:
- paul gorbould - 3X, all Google - Bingo!
But should I be worried? Will I be visited by a stalker, or a libel lawyer? I also note that my dead CBC page has been bumped down to the fourth spot via Google.com, but remains #1 on Google.ca. The Corp still has some pull nationally!)
- CBC blogger (Google) - OK, that fits.
- RUMOUR CBC (Google - Uh oh, Alan is gonna go off on me…)
- putting a counter on my blog (Blogger blog search)
- etymology chairman (2X, via Google UK and later Google New Zealand. Is this a hot topic overseas? I thought I was the only one so pedantic.)
- “chairman”+manager+sexist (Google Australia - again with this?)
Not Very Relevant Searches
Once again, I’m alarmed at how much search traffic gets diverted to my blog. Why can’t sites like mine be filtered out? And why do they rank so highly?
- mark kingwell (Blogger blog search beta)
- casino-rama ontario geographic-coordinates (Google)
- twins (2X, Blogger blog search beta)
- craig & murray oliver (Google - tee hee)
- Gor (Google – huh?)
- titus groan audio (Google UK)
Searches of Note
These ones are really interesting. At least I think so…
- Gor Gor hungry! Gor Gor want eat! (Google – WTF is that!?!)
- Prostitutes (2X, Technorati tag search)
I’m second, after “fat Milf Gets slammed Hard”. Alarmingly, these hits are coming from Taiwan.
- Hearty Thanks (Google)
Are you kidding me!? I’m the #1 link for “Hearty Thanks”? There are 3.8 MILLION reference to those words, and 180,000 to that exact phrase, and I come up first. Why? Geeze, I *pwn* teh internets.
- mayo shattuck III (Google)
See, I’m already #20 worldwide; #19 is the Constellation Energy announcement that he’s now Constellation Energy’s president and CEO. And the kicker? This search came from constellation.com, the company’s ISP.Is Chairman President Mayo googling himself?
I’m starting to find this guy really interesting, and not at all my kind of person.
According to sites like this one, Chairman Mayo was also chairman and private banking head for Deutsche Bank’s Alex Brown Unit, which conspiracy theorists say was one of the bin Laden family’s banks of choice. He quit suddenly on Sept. 12, 2001, bailing on a contract said to be worth between $7-13 million a year. Those same theorists mention his name in association with some ugly insider trading that allegedly took place right before the September 11 crisis.
Oh, and his banking boss became executive director of the CIA.
Oh, and his company’s business model seems to be picking up the pieces of deregulated energy trading in the wake of Enron’s collapse.
Oh, and some people say his company drove electricty rates up 72 per cent this summer, and is apparently big on union busting and pollution.
And did I mention he’s married to a cheerleader, and wanted to run the NFL?
Note: While it’s fun to pick on Chairman Mayo, I don’t think any of the above links are terribly credible, and I’m not about to let myself become one of those internet crazies with a hate-on for someone in power. I’m simply amused to discover that allowing himself to be called “Chairman Mayo” was only the first step in a long line of questionable behaviour.
UPDATE:
As it to prove my point about irrelevant search results, my site has been hammered with hits today. The reason: my offhand link to miserable failure at the top of this entry. See, the Google page explaining the “miserable failure” search results also lists recent “links to this post”. I’ve been at or near the top of the list today, resulting is a boatload of clicks.
I’ve had 86 referrals from that link in the past five hours (including surfers from af.mil, globeandmail.ca, microsoft.com, usda.gov) and my traffic has gone up five-fold. And I’m sad to say most of them will be disappointed in what they find here, which is not “miserable failure” related - but perhaps my rants about the shortcomings of Google will be of some use, somehow.)
On the other hand, if I were a cheapskate with an ad-heavy site who wanted to grab web traffic any way I could………..
Last night we had an intruder. Again.
My neighbourhood is beset – plagued, I tell you! – by raccoons.
Not the cute little Timothy Goes to School raccoons my kids think are so lovely. Not the trilling, big-bummed fuzzballs my sister finds endearing. No, these are hurricane-grade destructive brutes.
Like any good Toronto citizen, I diligently use our green bin for compostable waste – banana peels, coffee grinds, nasty diapers. I bag it neatly and tie the bags off, and put them in the green bin until Friday.
Or, until 2:00 a.m., nightly. Because that’s when these marauders come to disassemble my house. They knock over garbage cans, chew on the woodwork, and make short work of these “raccoon-proof” bins.
So this week I’ve been extra-diligent. I bought a brand new green bin (the old one had been attacked too often.) The clasp on this new bin is so tight I can barely close it without a hammer, and I need the jaws of life to open it. I even washed it down, and sprayed it with Lysol. Once the compost bags were in, I affixed three bungee cords over the lid. Then I put a 30 lb concrete patio stone on the top.
2:00 a.m.: CRASH. I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Outside was a raccoon the size of a Shetland pony. He didn’t just knock over the patio stone, he cast it down and smote it.
He then began dragging the bin down our alley (my wife, now awake, thought he might be dragging it to the curb to atone for previous sins.)
I managed to chase the thing off (and take a few pictures – he owes me at least a blog entry), but it came back later and finished the deal. Cujo managed to get out all the tasty stuff, then flung the nasty diapers all around just for fun. The patio stone was damaged, and somehow the three bungee cords were still attached.
I’m defeated. These raccoons are smart (Harvard ‘04) and strong (I think they’ve been eating my neighbour’s expired creatine packages). I once saw a pair of raccoons working as a team to open the garbage bin outside a KFC outlet in the Beach. I kid you not – one would sit on the top and hold the spring-activated door open, while the other climbed in to retrieve the food. Astonishing.
There’s supposedly some “raccoon proof” clasp that you can buy to attach to the formerly “raccoon proof” bins, but I can’t imagine it’ll stop them for long. In fact, I suspect the raccoons are behind the whole scam (and I saw Tom Jakobek taking a raccoon kit to a Leafs game last year.)
(When she reads this, my sister is likely to lay another “can’t fight nature” zinger on me, and suggest that I simply move my house. But her mind was poisoned during prepubescence by reading Frosty: A Raccoon to Remember too often.)
Or maybe the raccoon will just post a blog comment himself.
I was afraid this one would be moot, what with the transmogrification of the good doctor from Christopher Eccleston to David Tennant.
But now CBC has gone ahead and scheduled a repeat of the first season of Doctor Who for Tuesdays at midnight (that’s pretty late at night, but Doctor Who fans shouldn’t have a problem with time shifting.)
This is really just a test - I’m figuring out how to blog photos from Flickr. A couple of days ago, I took my family to the Rogers Chinese Lantern Festival at Ontario Place. And I must say, it was spectacular. A little pricey, but well worth the trip (particularly if you have kids.) I’ve uploaded plenty of photos to that Flickr account I keep pimping.
Ahem. It has been suggested that I should probably clarify something frightfully, astoundingly obvious:
Many of the pictures on this blog are silly, poorly-produced Photoshop jobs. They are not real.
Clear?
I try to include an image for every item I post, and I also like have some fun with Photoshop. I like to think of it as a jokey little treat for my three regular readers. (Question: Do you enjoy these? Are they worth the effort? Let me know in the Comments area.)
But, if I were doing this for CBC… well, I should probably return my paycheque. That aside, I’d have to identify doctored photos (like this one) to prevent stupid people from stupidly thinking it was real.
As should be obvious, this blog is not a CBC product. But it was never clear whether or not the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices apply to my blog, or my Flickr photos, or my Christmas cards. So here’s your disclaimer. Please forward it to all gullible people on the internet (hmm, maybe I can buy the mailing list from that Nigerian banking scam.)
To be absolutely, crystal clear about things:
- This is not a lady of the night working the Sunshine City.
I don’t know if Orilla has prostitutes, but if it does, they probably don’t ply their trade right in front of the city sign (helpful though that might be.)
- CBC and CTV hosts have never had a war of mutant powers
- Buttercup and Westley did not once set foot in Toronto City Hall
- Astronomers have never sighted a stylish coiffure floating in a globular star cluster
- There is no room for mayonnaise in the Cultural Revolution
- Nobody would buy this car
I don’t lay claim to any particular skill at photoshopping. To see some really skilled work, check out b3ta, Something Awful, Worth 1000 (my personal fave), and even CBC’s own Rick Mercer blog.
Which, I notice, makes little effort to identify fake photos. You’d think it’d be obvious. Except it isn’t.
I recently added a traffic counter to this blog. There are lots of them out there, but I decided to go with the free Site Meter - it’s that little rainbow Rubik’s Cube at the bottom of the right hand column. But I’ve put my settings at private - you don’t need to see the pitiful traffic levels I get.
Site Meter keeps track of basic site traffic, including daily and total visits and page views. It also tracks some information on who is visiting and what they are looking at: IP information, location, browser type, number of pages and duration of stay, entry and exit pages.
But the really interesting stat, the one I can’t help but pore over, is referrals. If someone got to my blog through a link or a search, it tells me what that last click was. It’s always nice to know who is linking to you and driving traffic to your site, of course. But it’s the searches that fascinate me.
See, this blog doesn’t have any real information on it. There’s no research, no facts, just a few opinions and observations from one lonely guy. Which means that if you are searching for something, and end up on my blog, you are probably going to be disappointed.
To you, I’m sorry.
But, now that’s said, let’s expose what these suckers have been searching for. Here are 11 of the most recent searches that landed the poor internaut on my blog:
mayo shattuck milwaukee (Google UK)
jackie rogers jr (Google)
Greg Frers (CBC.ca search of all web)
casino-rama ontario geographic-coordinates (Google)
gormenghast (Google blogsearch)
the teamakers (Google)
snl (Technorati tag search)
Michael Mayo, milwaukee (Google)
zed cbc (Technorati blog search)
john saul couchiching (Google)
prostitutes of orillia (Google)
Prostitutes of Orillia?!?
First off: bad idea. Second, someone was searching really hard, because I’m link #19 on that search. The phrasing strikes me as odd, too, like they have a union or something.
OK, I understand Google’s logic - I used the word “Orillia” in this post and this one, and “prostitute” in this one.
But that’s a hell of a stretch. And how can I possibly be the #11th result for “john saul couchiching“? Or 27th for “jackie rogers jr“?
Now, I’m a fan of Technorati and Google has a new Blog Search (beta). But the sort of failed searches listed above strike me as a good reason to exclude blogs from Google searches, an option that Google was supposed to add at one point.
Does anyone know an easy way to do this? Adding “-blog” to your search doesn’t really help, since it also eliminates all web pages that mention blogs, which is a lot of them these days. (For example, searching for “+gorbould -blog” eliminates not only my blog, but my website, which links to the blog.)
Looking at the above list, I really feel sorry for the other Chairman Mayos (still snickering, though.) I’m getting their traffic, and Site Meter says nobody is exiting to the correct sites. Chairmen: better get a blog, and start typing. Otherwise some smartass like me is going to be your top search result.
It almost makes me reconsider offhandedly writing about innocent bystanders - they’ll be saddled with and misdirected by my crap forever.
Actually I don’t feel that bad, not in this case… I just found out that Mayo A. Shattuck III was on the short list to become the next commissioner of the NFL.
He lost. But he’s obscenely rich, a big fan of building nuclear reactors, and his wife is a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader.
Come to think of it, I’m not in the least bit sorry. In fact, I’d be happy to be the #1 site for Mayo A. Shattuck III, worldwide. Someone should drop a Google bomb on him. You know, everyone gives some other site a link or two using the name Mayo A. Shattuck III? Again, that’s Mayo A. Shattuck III. It’s spelled “Mayo A. Shattuck III.”
Failing that, there’s always my Prostitutes of Orillia e-business…
I’ve always been fascinated by signage. It must have something to do with working with the English language for a living. I sometimes have trouble being concise with a 1,000 word limit (and I absolutely dread writing headlines) - so I can only imagine what it would be like to be limited to just a word or two.
Or no words at all - check out the Stick Figures in Peril pool at Flickr.
(As an aside, I’ve finally set up my own Flickr account, but it’s mostly boring family vacation images, and I’ve set most of those as “family only” - so enjoy the baboons and sunsets. My kids don’t need to be on the general internet.)
For those who also appreciate a good signage puzzler, I highly recommend the book Deep Time by Gregory Benford. It’s a fascinating look at creating messages that transcend time, language and even species. I was floored by the discussion of creating warning message to mark a nuclear waste site that would be dangerous for 10,000 years.
Where was I? Right, signage. I’m not pedantic about it (see Joe Clark on my local cheese shop, or his hate-on for arial photo group - both of which are highly entertaining, but not my personal vexation.) I’m merely bemused.
Over the course of the years, I’ve collected a few signage anecdotes that might be worth sharing. I thought about spilling them all at once, but I think I’ll let them trickle instead, as I’ve been doing with my last three items in the “Identical Twins” series. Plus, stretching them out will help me avoid embarassing post gaps like the one this week.
I make no claims to originality on these - someone is sure to have blogged them first - but here they are regardless.
Signage of the Apocalypse #1: Flame On!
My sister and I have both been captivated by this peculiar Toronto sign, which adorns the Peace Garden outside Toronto City Hall. (Apologies for the crappy picture quality; I forgot my camera and had to snap it with the cam in my Palm Pilot.)
Forgiving the lack of punctuation, I love its sturdy, timeless look and simple message: CAUTION ETERNAL FLAME.
You’ve been warned!
But what’s so striking about that text is the decision to include the adjective. Is an eternal flame more dangerous than a normal flame? I’d say no, it’s probably less dangerous, because it’s always been there and always will be.
What you really need to watch out for are the Completely Random Flames - ones that suddenly spring up out of nowhere, like at the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride (did you notice that Buttercup catches fire even though the flame is three feet away?)
I’m told City Hall also has Rodents of Unusual Size, but they’re most often found inside the building.
I ride my bike to work whenever the weather is good. My preferred route in from the east end is along the bike path on the north side of Lakeshore Blvd. (It takes a few minutes more than going straight along Queen, but I get to see ducks and rabbits instead of streetcars and prostitutes.)
The bike path is pretty decent, with one irksome exception: an enormous bump caused by a tree root growing under the path.
This bump has been there for years, at least as long as I’ve been cycling that path. At first it caught me completely off guard, with a bone-crunching thud followed by my bike being launched into the stratosphere like something out of BMX Park.
I quickly learned to give the bump I wide berth. Soon after, I noticed that someone had helpfully painted the upper ridge of this escarpment with white spray paint. Later on, it was marked with yellow paint. Then someone added a grid of yellow contour lines (is the thing computer generated?). Then a yellow runway approach arrow was added. For a couple of weeks, there was even a pylon beside it.
It reminds me, in a painful yet nostalgic way, of the dearly departed Gardiner Hump. They placed permanent warning signs around that sucker too, but it took years before anyone actually fixed it.
Which makes me ask the same question about my hump: why make so many trips to warn people about it, and none to fix it?
OK, so the people who put up the warnings were probably cycle Samaritans, not city workers – though I can’t imagine nobody has ever complained to the city about it. And perhaps the stripe painters don’t know how to fix a pothole themselves.
Of course, the problem won’t go away for good until someone severs the tree root, which is probably tricky and, for some cyclists, morally repugnant.
But if you let a tree get away with tripping you with its roots, what’s next? Thorns in the eyes? Clotheslining your throat with branches?
Give these things an inch and they’ll take an acre. Teach the brute a lesson, before it’s too late!
OK, this one isn’t strictly CBC, but we’ve carried enough programming featuring each star to warrant a bit of a stretch.
Who is more fabulous? Is it Jackie Rogers Jr., the albino performer made famous by Martin Short on Saturday Night Live? (Seen here hosting “Jackie Rogers Jr.’s $100000 Jackpot Wad” (transcript).
Or is it Olympic figure skating champion Evgeni Plushenko, whose medal collection is outshone only by his shirt, hair, and teeth?
(Do check out his website, if only for the unconvincing “I got married, sorry ladies!” story. Did you see this dude performing “Sex Bomb“? Eeeeeep.)
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“So,” my friend writes, “WELL DONE, one and all. As one person wrote, “Grassroots organizing works!” It’s lovely to enjoy a moment of collective success.”
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