The (Cute) Face Of Terror

Big uproar in the social media (and media in general) regarding Rolling Stone's front page, showing Boston bombings suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev...

Critics are saying they make him look glamourous, like a ''rock star'', comparing it to their covers featuring The Doors' Jim Morrison:

Sure, if dying in your bath is what passes for glamour.

Funny how no one batted an eye when the New York Times featured the exact same fucking picture on their front page:

I know the concept of ''innocent until proven guilty'' has taken a beating of late, and how there are innocents on death row and George Zimmerman walks free...

But to call for a boycott of one of the most important publications of the 20th Century because they dared show that appearances can be deceiving, that a popular kid who is a good student can veer from the straight path, that not all terrorists are disgruntled old men with long beards - is completely missing the point.

Shit can happen, and can spiral out of anyone's control. Not all troubled teens turn downright ''evil'', not every honor student becomes a killer, but the ''perfect storm'' of circumstances can bring a home-grown threat to life just as much as blindly waging useless wars abroad, or blindly supporting countries that get on other countries' nerves on purpose.

I say ''kudos, Rolling Stone''. Instead of putting Maroon 5 or Bruno Mars on your cover for a vapid, 3-page piece on how hard it is to do your own shopping when you're a superstar, you strapped your balls on and went ahead with the main article of the summer.

Then again, you also put Charles Manson on your cover once...

Death Of A Legend

Schwartz's is an internationally known deli based in Montréal, so good and so fucking awesome that in the near-century it's been operating, countless profiteers tried to convince the owners to franchise the brand. Madonna and a slew of other celebs have their products delivered to them.

The secret to their success is their unique 10-day curing, and their mix of (now-cliché) ''Montréal-style'' spices, all within an area that gives it its flavour for having been in use for over 80 years. Its founder was named Ruben Schwartz, and is the one after whom the sandwiches are named.

It was purchased by a consortium of businesspeople in 2012, including the owner of Bâton Rouge chains, and former owners of the Nickels chains Céline Dion and René Angélil; (Nickels was sold to Bâton Rouge in 1997).

When the sale took place, I had one major fear: that they would force Schwartz's to supply Nickels (who also serve smoked meat reubens), a rather large chain, and that by doing so, they would over-use their smokers and cure the meats for less time, giving it less flavour, and eventually kill off the one restaurant that was king to enable the larger chain to thrive by selling better-than-what-they-serve/sub-par products.

I was wrong.

The result is much worse:

Fuck the 10-day curing period, here is microwavable smoked meat that you can find in every supermarket chain in the country.

The times, they are a-changing.

Bad Parenting

Top-Ten list of bad parents.

Some are fakes, though, such as this one:

Yoga And Mark Driscoll

I came across a funny blog today called Def Shepherd; it seems to be mainly about religion - or anti-religious. Or something.

I particularly like this post about Mark Driscoll, the idiot pastor who said ''masturbation is homosexuality'', to which I replied, in my Facebook status that day, ''I guess I am pretty much gay for myself''. I know, not my best line, but still...

This time, Driscoll claims ''yoga is demonic''...

If there is a God, I predict He/She/It will have a pretty good laugh at Driscoll's expense when he makes it to the heavenly gates, right before kicking his sorry ass all the way to purgatory. - or wherever fucking idiots are sent.

Forever In Blue Jeans

On the subway today, I was surrounded by people wearing blue jeans. Everyone, all wearing blue fucking jeans. 40 out of 45 people in my train.

In this time where people are getting more conservative, they’re reverting to fucking cowboys, to ''working man’s clothes'', as Bruce Springsteen would put it. Except in the 70s, it was the Left who was doing it, now it seems it’s the Right.

There’s something inherently wrong in conformism, in homogenizing Society, in becoming all the same, in the lack of bright colours and the lack of black.

The Right keep ''warning'' us about Socialism, the Great Evil that would mean a totalitarian state, but it’s them who want to increase security at all costs, and send everyone to fucking jail to keep an even better eye on them, most of whom would be inside for petty crimes like smoking weed while the politicians and priests stay on the outside, passing law after law to put more people in prisons while they, themselves, commit the most important, grave crimes: raping kids, razing the lands of their resources, creating bankruptcies and starving the poor, starting wars for no reason, and helping their banker buddies and Big Company friends get richer beyond what’s reasonable for no fucking reason.

After all, what good is having a million billion dollars once you’ve purchased everything? There’s nothing left to buy, and you still have leftover money; it just doesn’t work. It means nothing.

Just like blue fucking jeans.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibilities Not To Invade Peoples' Privacies

 Apple. Yahoo. Microsoft. Computer services-based companies that have branched elsewhere trying to make more and more money all the time.

Then came Google who, by selling tiny ads and adspace, could provide all their content for free. And everything they invented was open-sourced, so others could come in and improve or tweak them as they saw fit.

It could have been the one, true, Ultimate Company, the good guys with a conscience.

But it seems like every day they abuse their monopoly - and our privacy. From storing our searches via our ISPs to scanning our emails to target ads, they've time and time again collected data on us for ulterior use. Now we're learning the cars they sent out for Google Street View were also collecting WiFi information while it was taking pictures of our homes - for future commercial use, yes, but also complete emails, URLs and passwords. Everything it could record in the nanoseconds it was outside homes an businesses.

C'mon, man. The reason we like you is you're more ethical than the rest. Now that you're on top, you're not supposed to become worse than they are, for fuck's sake. And don't just tell people to ''move''.