R.I.P. Alain Magloire

If I had a hammer,
They'd shoot me in the morning
They'd shoot me in the evening
Despite being seven cops against one man

Yep, the Montréal cops killed another person earlier this month.

(Alain) Magloire had only recently ended up on the streets as a result of mental illness.

Magloire was the father of two daughters, and friends and family contacted by CBC News described him as charismatic and well-educated.

(He) had previously been employed in the field of molecular biology research and also worked for ten years as a monitor at Camp Papillon — a camp for disabled children.

A career criminal, obviously.

Officers shot Magloire on Monday after responding to reports of a man wielding a hammer and acting aggressively in the vicinity of Montreal's central bus station on Berri Street.

'' Kill first, defend your position later'' seems to be their motto, more so than ''To serve and protect'', for sure. One (admittedly distraught) guy with a hammer, versus seven trained professionals. They could have attacked three at a time and possibly not even had been hit once with the hammer - and subdued him with barely scratch marks for anyone involved -or shot him in the legs, or the hammer-wielding arm. (Officers with tasers could not make it to the scene on time)

I wish I could say something along the lines of ''you will be remembered and missed'', but the more people these fascists murder, the harder it is to remember them all. ''Missed'', though, yes, for sure.

There are calls for civilian oversight boards to investigate police shootings and, sure, that could be a step in some general direction. But I suggest each time a police officer badly injures (broken limbs, loss of an eye) or kills someone, they should be detained and tried in court, the same as civilians, no matter what the investigation says or does, so the incident is recorded in the public domain. And I stand by my life-long position that cops and politicians should be liable to twice the penalty for crimes compared to civilians because theirs also involve a breach of public trust that has to be accounted for.

Idiot Of The Month

I've been sitting on this one for a few weeks now, because it's really graphic. Horrific, really, and even more stupid than it is violent.

It's a fuck-up, dancing at a wedding, with his AK-47, getting so excited he kills 3 people.

And, no, it's not a Christian Conservative at a gay wedding... just an over-excited idiot going Gangnam Style...

PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS IF YOU THINK IT MIGHT UPSET YOU.

R.I.P Nicolas Plamondon

I had to write about Expozine recently for someone involved with it (he participated from 2007 to 2011) to go through enough hell to alter the life experience of everyone who knew him...

Artist Nicolas Plamondon took his own life a few days ago, unable to cope with a world he never quite fit in. Ever searching for his place in it, recognizing himself always only in part in what was offered, even his art reflected his dazed outlook:

The above picture was taken from Théâtre Des Souffrances and reprinted in the last edition of Four Minutes To Midnight, which I also occasionally contribute to.

Because life and art often intersect, he participated in the Spring demonstrations to support striking students, getting arrested multiple times. They weren't his first times behind bars, as he wrote about his 10-hour detention for the G20 demos in 2010 here.

The world loses one sensitive young adult who thought the world we live in doesn't make sense. The status quo loses an opponent and rolls on that much closer to victory.

Cop Kills Kid, Part 75

''To serve and protect.'' A motto dating back to the black-and-white days of yore, Pleasantville-type Utopian pasts of ''the way things were'', where the most rampant crime was underage smoking or forgetting to pay for your sundae at the drive-in diner.

Then again, there were less laws to even break back then, as cars didn't even have seat belts.

''Law enforcement'' has sure come  along way since then.

Wikipedia describes their job thusly:

Law enforcement broadly refers to any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society. Although the term may encompass entities such as courts and prisons, it is most frequently applied to those who directly engage in patrols or surveillance to dissuade and discover criminal activity, and those who investigate crimes and apprehend offenders.^[1] Furthermore, although law enforcement may be most concerned with the prevention and punishment of crimes, organizations exist to discourage a wide variety of non-criminal violations of rules and norms, effected through the imposition of less severe consequences.

But in the past 10 years or so, what is most commonly referred to as ''the police'' have resorted more to the ''force'' part of the word ''enforcement'', using military tactics, weapons, vehicles and excuses to become what many conspiracy theorists once warned we were headed towards: a police state.

From the mass brutal beatings of tens of thousands of kids who thought a tuition hike was too high, to repeatedly sodomizing people they arrest even when under media scrutiny (a fact that happens way too often in itself, but it seems New Mexico cops in particular now have developed a taste for it), to having a double-standard regarding aboriginal women in Canada, to selling information to organized crime, to killing innocent civilians - perhaps the saddest, disturbing, recurring situation of all.

It seems to go over people's heads when it's an alleged criminal receiving the bullet, and things are usually forgiving when it's the result of intermediary force - for example the result of getting tasered (and we're lucky that in instances where Tasers are used on 80-year-olds they aren't always fatal) - but there are clear instances where death should simply have never occurred under any circumstance, and today's example is the strongest in a long time: a man wanted to teach his son a lesson after taking his truck without authorization, so he did what anyone born prior to 1980 would do: he called the cops, thinking they'd bring the boy home, he'd have a scare, and he'd have learned his lesson and be good to get on with his life.

But that's not how cops work nowadays. They have a licence to kill and use it, they shoot first and ask questions never, they seem to no longer have to nor have the training for using submissive and/or non-lethal force first and whenever possible. And they no longer shoot to maim or stop - they shoot to kill, period. Sometimes even on clearly homeless folks, a story found everywhere from Santa Clara (aged 22) to Montréal (aged 40, also dead: a 36-year-old innocent bystander).

Tyler Comstock, though, was a bright 19-year-old kid  on his way to getting his GED.

Ames Police Officer Adam McPherson eventually fired six shots into the truck, two of which struck Tyler who was later pronounced dead.

The official report claims the action was necessary in order "to stop the ongoing threat to the public and the officers."

Tyler's dad says he was unarmed at the time.

The saddest and most common part of that story?

McPherson is currently on paid leave pending the results of his department's investigation.

Of course he is. His friends and co-workers are investigating him and the tactics he used, which are the exact same ones they use all the time. How in hell are they going to bring the whole thing down by saying he did anything wrong? And from that point on, how are any of those murderers with badges ever going to be tried in a court of law like the rest of us mere mortals or, rather, the target practice we seem to be to them.

And there is a kicker:

An unidentified person on the Ames police radio dispatch twice suggested that police back off their pursuit of a teen who allegedly stole a pickup truck from the work site he and his father were working at on Monday.

Sounds a lot like what George Zimmerman was told when he shot and killed an unarmed teen. I wonder how that turned out.

Oh, Crumbling City (Part 26)

When it isn't an alert to boil water because of a human error, it's Nature giving us the worst storm we've ever faced. When that's not it, it's politicians killing the city's soul by forcing it its centuries-old commerces and/or ''freak places'' to shut down.

But mostly, it's crumbling infrastructures. Tunnels. Or the fucking subway's roof. Or slabs of concrete falling on a woman quietly eating her lunch at a restaurant.

And lots of sinkholes, many of them smack-dab in the middle of downtown: Sherbrooke street (near McGill); at the corner of Ste-Catherine and McGill; St-Mathieu and Ste-Catherine; And today's newest one, at Guy and Ste-Catherine (one block East of St-Mathieu):

Yes, it swallowed a backhoe. It was hungry, give it a break.

Now that we've established that the ground cannot hold any weight, let's move on to another topic which is a whole lot sadder: three blocks East and one block South of there, at nearly the same time, a man was crushed to death by a three-tonne metal plate that fell on him. It was from a crane that hadn't been secured properly on the construction site of yet another condo tower, this one adjacent to the Bell Centre, where they plan on building over 100 storeys of condos (therefore roughly 300-400 dwellings) worth from half a million to $2.5M each, dispersed in two or three towers, I forget).

The thing is... there are two subway lines underneath that floor, and aqueducts. And they'll need to increase the water flow potential to supply these new dwellings, as they are pretty much just parking lots or pedestrian walkways for the moment. On ground that can barely handle regular vehicles right now.

And though theoretically, the sound of complete families of bourgeois millionaires crumbling to their deaths doesn't seem like the worst thing that can happen, any death is still tragic, and hundreds of them at a time, all of which could easily be pinned on a city's over-eagerness to make easy money and weed out the poor from its downtown core, would make us the laughingstock of the civilized world. Plus Dubai.

At times like these, I understand those who deny the existence of climate change: who cares about what'll kill us in 50 years since we'll do ourselves in with greed, corruption, seedy construction, poisonous foods, and wars in less than that anyway?

Video Of The Week: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band

In the wake of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin debacle, one can't help but think back to 1999 Amadou Diallo murder. If you don't remember, here's a quick Wikipedia quote:

Amadou Bailo Diallo (September 2, 1975 – February 4, 1999) was a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea who was shot and killed in New York City on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss, who fired a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck Diallo, outside his apartment at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.^[1]

Diallo was unarmed at the time of the shooting, and a firestorm of controversy erupted subsequent to the event as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both within and outside New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.

Outrage ensued, of course, and many artists spoke out, first against the shooting, then the verdict. Among the most vocal singers who recorded songs in response were Wyclef Jean (Diallo, featuring Youssou N'Dour), Le Tigre (Bang! Bang!) and Bruce Springsteen, who gets the honors this week.

The video was filmed during the E Street Band's 10-night run at Madison Square Garden by filmmaker Jonathan Demme (The Silence Of The Lambs), which also spawned a DVD.

Springsteen's intensity is best appreciated through live performances - you want to see his face struggling, his neck veins nearly exploding, his fist clenched when hearing the songs. You also get a better feel for his backing band, capable both of balls-out rock and incredible subtlety.

Killer Promotion

There is a huge difference between the American Justice system and the Canadian one, particularly in Québec, which has a large part of its law book inspired by the French. And there are tons of differences between the George Zimmerman killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Constable Jean-Loup Lapointe killing Fredy Villanueva in Montréal nearly five years ago (and whose case has yet to result in a ruling).

But there are also tons of similarities: both were unarmed teenagers from visible minorities, murdered by people who were under the impression that they were unpunishable representatives of The Law.

I don't know what the future holds for Zimmerman, though I'm fairly confident that if he is tried in a civil case, he will receive tons of donations from right-wing bigots, racists and Fox News viewers; I do know, however, that Lapointe will now be a member of Montréal's SWAT team, where he'll have more leeway into firing his weapon.

We're talking about a man who took all of 57 seconds to exit his vehicle, wrestle a kid (Dany Villanueva, Fredy's younger brother) to the ground to handcuff him, tell him to stop squirming, shoot three bullets into the deceased and two more in two other teens. All while his partner, Stéphanie Pilotte, never once felt the need to pull out her gun. Can you say ''trigger-happy''?

The article appeared in this morning's Montréal Gazette, and while it mostly goes into listing facts and does its best to not take sides, two passages struck me as journalist Sue Montgomery subtly denouncing the prevailing situation in these cases:

“This squad is called on more often to use their guns because they’re involved in high-risk interventions,” said Alain Arsenault, whose client was injured by one of Lapointe’s bullets. “I think it was a bad decision on the part of police force management (to give Lapointe the job).”

Montreal police spokesman Ian Lafrenière said that Lapointe applied for the highly sought-after job, and got it after undergoing rigorous tests. (...)

“He has never been found guilty of anything, so it would be hard for us to keep him in an office or something like that,” he said. “And we’re not going to say don’t take that officer on the SWAT team because some people might think it doesn’t look good.”

The spokesman's quote is particularly revealing in this first passage, because it brings light to the fact that cops get investigated by other cops who almost always clear them of any wrongdoing, and even in the rare cases where they are taken to court, they get off Scott free. And then they have the audacity to brag about their so-called ''clean'' records...

Then there's this:

SWAT, or technical response officers, intervene in special police operations such as hostage-takings, bomb defusings or disappearances under water, which require them to have diving skills. Montreal’s SWAT team was present during the student demonstrations last year.

Reading between the lines, it comes down to this: if discontent people get together to mass-protest - like in the mass-strikes part of the student movement last Spring - there will be more (actual) killers present to stop you than last year, and now they've perfected their kettle technique, so there'll be no escape...

''Not'' Guilty

I am just as angry as the next guy that the ''justice'' system has excused George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin. But unlike most of my friends, from what had transpired surrounding the case of late, I kind of knew that's where it was going to go.

But the shock is epic. Even The Huffington Post decided to get opinionated:

The Michael Moore quote up-top is quite true. Not just that, but Trayvon Martin's actions that night were scrutinized way beyond what normally transpires in ''normal'' murder cases. As a matter of fact, it was treated a little in the same way rape is, where they have more questions about the victim than they do the culprit (What was she wearing? Had she been drinking?), and the jury's fear of ''a Black man'' overshadowed the facts.

Because what this verdict means, pretty much, it's that since Black people appear more dangerous, it is excusable to kill them even if/when they're unarmed, teenagers, and coming home from the convenience store. Especially if they're wearing hoodies. A good lawyer could still get you off for killing one in a suit, but ''street'' wear is a no-brainer.

It has stopped being a ''Justice system'' and has become a ''criminal assessment system'' instead, where one type of victim is more complicit in their fate than others, and aggressors can be cleared of charges despite all evidence pointing to the contrary if they can arise enough suspicion on the victim.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for ''Innocent Until Proven Guilty'' - when the rules aren't rigged. This is exactly what I was referring to two weeks ago when I said:

with a legacy that lives on today in the disparity of the applications of the Law codes and how minorities are targeted most by the police and ''the system'' in general in the U.S.

And you can't ''just'' blame Florida, either. Case in point: this black woman mother who got a 20-year jail sentence for firing warning shots. WARNING SHOTS. At her abusive husband. And guess who's going to take care of their child now?

 There is a Mahatma Gandhi quote that goes along the lines of:

"There is a higher court than courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts."

But not only does it not apply to this situation, it doesn't even apply to this generation, because whenever shit like this happens, those in the wrong are convinced they're right. Say what you will about Barack Obama, he's always trying to choose between the lesser of two (or four) evils; Fox News, George W. Bush, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, Rick Perry, Stephen Harper: these people either deliberately force the choice to be between two evils, or just create one themselves.

And there are too many of them with too wide a platform to spread their stupidity around to masses who are unable of critical thinking (or too blinded by their stance on smaller issues to change sides for the larger ones). And that leads to this. And the system once again proves it's fucked.

Guns Don't Kill People, Kids Do

Did you hear about the 5-year old who killed his sister in Kentucky Tuesday afternoon?

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White identified the girl as Caroline Sparks. He said the children's mother was at home when the shooting occurred, and the gun was a gift the boy received last year.

"It's a Crickett," he said. "It's a little rifle for a kid. ...The little boy's used to shooting the little gun."

White said the gun was kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell had been left in it.

He said the shooting will be ruled accidental. "Just one of those crazy accidents," White said.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/04/30/2621458/5-year-old-boy-accidentally-shoots.html#storylink=omni_popular#wgt=pop#storylink=cpy

So to Coroner decided the outcome before the autopsy... seems legit.

For those wondering what a ''rifle for a kid'' looks like, here is a screengrab from the company's website:

It's not the size of the gun that matters, it's the velocity of the bullets, and on all guns, they come out at a speed that can kill. I checked out their website, and nowhere did I find an age requirement for any of these. Yet, G.I. Joes are for ages 5 and up because a kid could choke on... the detachable, plastic guns.

I mean, fuck - can't you get them paint guns until they're 10? What the fuck kind of small, hick county has a Coroner who knows the victim and culprit enough to say such things as "The little boy's used to shooting the little gun"? How used to it was he that he decided pointing it as a 2-year old was a good idea?

But the real criminals are the parents. They're the ones who killed their daughter, by giving a weapon and training a child who could not possibly understand the consequences of not making sure the weapon is unloaded and under lock inside the house.

I don't care if owning guns is a way of life, or if you could be allowed to marry your fucking pistol - a kid, under 10 for sure, under 16 a best, should not own one. You want to train them to shoot, you take them to a firing range, rent a weapon there, go back home alive.

There should be background checks. Not just for owning guns, for having fucking kids.

Shout Out To Boston

I'm sure you heard.

But what I choose to remember from this, after the pain, the sadness, the sorrow, the anger, the guilt, the lack of understanding... is the people who made this shit day better: the runners who ran an extra two miles to the nearest (!!) hospital to donate blood, folks who ran towards the blast to help victims, and an incredible focus to get to the essence of the emergency.

Good, tough people.

For now, I don't care who did this - Life will get them back. I care about the heroes who stopped this tragedy from being 10 times worse.

One last thing, for Republicans/Conservatives: would more guns have stopped this? Would lower taxes have prevented this? Where was God? How can we blame gays, or ''illegal'' immigrants, or minorities in general? Can a war be started over this?

R.I.P. Mindy McCready

She was a tortured soul who felt alone, needed to feel loved and accepted, and never quite got past the brink of happiness. As a teen - some reports (quoting him) say she was 15, others (quoting her) say 16 - she met baseball steroid über-user and star pitcher Roger Clemens and they promptly started a long-term relationship that was ''sexual in its nature''; as a young adult, she entered the country music business on the strength of karaoke tapes she brought to Nashville labels (and was signed by BNA Records); apart from Clemens, she dated pop culture side-dishes Dean Cain and Drake Berehowski; her substance-abuse problems became so rampant that she spent a season on Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew.

That was the public life of Mindy McCready.

In the end, she shot herself on the same porch, in the same exact manner as her boyfriend (and father of her second child) David Wilson, who had done it a month prior. It was at least her fifth suicide attempt.

Most of the conversation regarding her death should center around her talent, then substance abuse and mental health - and hopefully it will.

But we should also reserve a spot to talk about Reality TV, and more specifically Dr. Drew's exploitation show. She is the fifth ''cast member'' of the hack Dr. Drew Pinski - the third from Season 3 alone - to die in the last two years. While some of those were deemed ''accidental'', all of them involved drugs and alcohol directly: Rodney King drowned but was found to have alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and PCP in his blood, and Grease actor Jeff Conway may have died from pneumonia, but the autopsy showed his life-long addiction to painkillers was the cause of it. Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr and Real World participant Joey Kovar both died of overdoses, Starr on cocaine and heroin, Kovar on heroin and other opiates.

Some cynics claim it'd be a scandal if no one from a series about addiction had died, and Pinski agrees with them, from a CNN interview last night:

One of my hopes was, in bringing ‘Celebrity Rehab’ out, was to teach people how dangerous addiction was. If I was doing a show on cancer, there would not be much surprise when my cancer patient died. In fact, we’d celebrate a few years of good quality life. People don’t understand that addiction has virtually the same prognosis. If you have other mental health issues on top of that, it’s so much worse. This was not an addiction death, interestingly. This was related to - had her boyfriend not died, I don’t think there’s any way we’d be in this position right now.

Really? He drops the fucking towel this easily? ''Meh, I gave it a half-assed shot, spewed out a few clichés here and there, made her (and others) look like a complete ass, and I did all that while also seeing my regular, non-celeb patients on the side, raking money in from all sides while forging myself a reputation as the go-to guy. Come see me, you have a 1-in-3 chance of dying.''

Jack Kevorkian went to jail for helping people who wanted to die get there. This hack's job is to try to save the fuckers and he fails consistently - how is that not also murder?

Truth, Allegations, And Things Left Unsaid

The things that maketh murder...

There are many things fishy about the death of web programmer/activist/Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, one of which being that he didn't get to see his court case (MIT was suing him for $1M and jail time for hacking into their computers and downloading millions of subscription-based articles from JSTOR, an online academic database, and distributing them for free) go through, where he could have made a very public plea for the advancement of a free internet despite having little chances of actual victory.

 Another was the way in which he died: by hanging. His father claims ''the government killed him'', but whether it's metaphorically or as a matter of fact, a noose around one's neck is, indeed, one of the easiest ways to make murder seem like suicide.

Then again, a web-savvy supernerd would know just how many questions would be raised should he be found hanging from a noose, and could have done it on purpose just to awake suspicions and ''get the people talking'', as Will Ferrell would say.

Even I'm talking about it, and I knew nothing of the case when I woke up yesterday morning. ''Touché'', said the priest to the boy.

Video Of The Week: The Boomtown Rats

Many folks know Bob Geldof as the old guy who gets U2 and/or Bono to play all these benefit events, but before that, he led The Boomtown Rats, an Irish New Wave band that had a few semi-hits between 1979 and 1985, among which She's So Modern and this week's entry, I Hate Mondays.

Now, like Garfield, I really do hate Mondays, to the point where in College and University, whenever I could, I would choose classes in order to have Mondays off and instead start my week off on Tuesdays, which was the greatest idea ever: not only did it make my weekends a day longer than everyone else's, it also forced me to be on the ball as soon as I did make my way to school, because everybody was already right into their week, so I couldn't afford to be in a ''Monday slump''.

The song itself, though, is inspired by a much more tragic story: on January 29th, 1979, Brenda Ann Spencer, then aged 16,  killed two and injured 9 (eight kids and a cop) while shooting at her neighbour school from the comfort of her own home. Not only did she not show any remorse, her explanation  for the crime was "I don't like Mondays; this livens up the day."

Enjoy.

R.I.P. Pascual Perez

In the midst of racism in the news, conspiracy theorist Tila Tequila, the American elections, and the continuing saga of corruption in Québec politics, one subject fell through the cracks: the death (murder) of Pascual Perez, one of my favourite Montréal Expos pitchers.

The former All-Star was found dead at his Dominican Republic home:

Some of the reported details of Perez's death are gruesome, but they also have yet to be confirmed. One report says robbers waited for Perez, a terminally-ill kidney patient with five children, to receive his $2,000 major league pension check before surprising him at his home.

I couldn't describe him better than this if I tried to:

A brother to Melido Perez and Carlos Perez, both of whom also had substantial major league careers, Pascual Perez could follow a 95 mph fastball with a sleepy eephus pitch — just for fun. Listed at 6-foot-2 and 162 pounds, Perez was all arms and legs on the mound with a Jheri- curl mullet hairdo on top.

His rainbow pitch was a marvel to witness. It flew 15 feet in the air and looked like an easy, Little League pitch that was certain to get knocked outside the park - except it never was.

He, like many Expos, had a pretty bad cocaine problem, twice going into rehab in his three-season stint in Montréal. His brother Carlos also played here, and Éric Gagné mentioned him in his autobiography, saying ''he always had two things on him: a million dollars in cash, and a loaded gun''. Freak family, but beautiful to watch play.

Inevitable Irony

Just hours after I'd posted the Vote With A Bullet video, a man erupted at the Parti Québécois' victory celebration, shot two people and started a fire with a molotov cocktail. One died, the other is in critical condition; someone else is treated for extreme shock.

Newly-elected (first female) Prime Minister of Québec Pauline Marois was escorted off mid-speech, but returned a few moments later, asking attendees to leave the place calmly, because ''that's how a Premier reacts''.

More to come as it develops, probably.

Today's Sign Of Our Civilization's Decadence

I'm not stupid; I know media organizations are way, way past ''trying to provide accurate, objective information'' as the Fourth Estate - the one designed to protect and inform the people about and from sources, mostly the government and the outside world.

But to actively demand the death of a person kind of crosses so many lines it makes me sick:

So far, the suspect is an alleged mass murderer. A trial will likely find him guilty, and the jury will probably think so even before the trial begins. These things happen. (They're wrong in theory, but with the prevalence of news sources and their choice of hiring commentators rather than journalists have led to this type of situation.)

But to ask for someone's death before even a single shred of evidence is put forth in what we, as a civilization, have agreed hundreds of years ago was the proper medium to do so is disgusting.

Not to mention that civilized countries no longer have the death penalty as an option, as the U.S. is the sole G-7 representative to have it, and the other countries where it is prevalent are China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Syria, Bangladesh, Somalia, and Sudan. Countries the Western World sees as being governed by ruthless tyrants, some of which have been deposed, most of which are at war with their people.

The way I see it, if we're going to live in a world where we have the right to bear arms and an armed shooter kills a bunch of people in public, the only ones who are allowed to ''put him to sleep forever'' are people who were there and make that call. Anything beyond that is unacceptable.

If you're going to bitch about the State's right to tax your fucking ass, you'd better do everything you can to ensure it doesn't have the right to kill you; you'd just be asking for trouble...

The Dark Night

You've probably heard about the shooting at the premiere for The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado.

And you've probably heard about one of the victims being Jessica Ghawi (a.k.a. Jessica Redfield), a young woman who had escaped harm in a recent Toronto shooting. Maybe you've even read her blog entry about the Toronto incident.

As could easily have been predicted, the story reopened the debate on the necessity of gun ownership, the risks, etc. And that's fine.

I just want to point out that this tragedy, this useless death, wasn't about just one victim. The others are just as important, died at the same place for the same stupid lack of reason.

Zombie Apocalypse Sign Of The Day

You know what? there are far too many Zombie/cannibalism stories in the news these days, and I seem to come across all of them - about a dozen so far.

This time, at a Sacramento motel...






Then again...

The Dangers Of Being Teachers

A teacher who survived a shoot-out a week ago was stabbed in her home.

Her husband, who teaches at the same school, found her body.

After the recent strings of zombie-attacks (at last count, 9 in the last month), we're down to same-victim violence attacks.

All things odds should be working against. So either buy a lottery ticket, or this impending Apocalypse shit that worried George W. Bush so much is on its way.

Moving Day Reminder

Our friends at Forget The Box would like to remind folks of the yearly disaster that is Moving Day in Québec - particularly in Montréal - and how it tends to be worse for furballs than humans, seeing as they often end up discarded, thrown out, or sent to shelters (if they're lucky).

I've seen it happen too many times. And this statistic burns my soul every time I see it:

Due to the incredible numbers of homeless animals, 25 000 animals are euthanized per year in Montréal alone.

Those things are alive.