Thursday Linkshare Apalooza, August 9, 2012

I have a browser stuffed with stuff to share, and I do not really feel like squeezing more blood from my heart onto the page tonight, so let’s just get right down to it.

Here is a bit of modern comedy about the joys of text(ing).

Love the style on this piece. Sure, the art is beyond primitive, but it gets the job done, and the animation keeps up with the monologue perfectly, and I love that. I love things where the content is happening on more than one sensory level at a time. Like music videos which are about the song being sung, or animations based on speech like this one.

I love that kind of thing!

As for the text talk, while I have no cell phone myself, I talk via text online all the freaking time, and so his points more or less apply to me too. I have had all those things happen to me, and they piss me off solid. DO NOT IGNORE ME!

Next up, you have heard it before. You have seen it before. You may even have typed it before, especially if you are old enough to have needed to test a typewriter.

But odds are, you never knew it had actually happened… until now.

And here is the video proof!

Yes, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Well, technically, he jumped onto the lazy dog then kind of fell off of him on the other side. But let’s not pick nits.

I wonder how long it took to get the obviously tame fox to do it. He obviously did not quite have the thrust, and it looks to be a youngish fox (though it is hard to tell with foxes) but I can easily imagine the person thinking “Wait… I have a brown fox who is very excitable and bouncy… and a dog who, if not exactly lazy, has a calm and placid temperament… quick, get the camera!”

And then it was just a matter of running the little foxy around to get him all excited and revved up, then getting him jumping over things and rewarding him, then getting him to try to jump the big dog.

Probably took a whole afternoon, but it was worth it, don’t you think? An idiomatic phrase, a sentence really, captured in real life, on film.

Now that we are warmed up with comedy, time to inject a little sadness, I am afraid. The following is a real letter an actual father gave to his son after his son came out of the closet.

This is what hate sounds like.

Click to enlarge to a more readable size.

I have heard of this sort of thing happening, as incomprehensible as it is. People disowning their children after learning their children were LGBT. As if it was a choice. As if their children were doing this just to hurt them. As if…

As if having an LGBT child was worse than having no child at all.

But it is quite another thing to actually read it, right there in the parent’s own handwriting, in their own words. I cannot imagine being so cold as to write something like that. When I read it, I get this profound sense of dead dread coldness from it. It is all so cruel and detached.

Not so long ago, it would have been dating outside one’s race that provoked such cold hate.

Hopefully, this hate too shall pass.

In fact, maybe it already has. Check out this heartwarming article, in which a father writes a letter to the future gay son he may one day have.

My favorite part :

I am still, as always, your biggest defender. Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you’re any less capable of taking care of/defending yourself. That said, if you need me to stand next to you, in front of you, write letters, sign petitions, advocate, or anything else, I am here. I will go to war for you.

Emphasis from original article, but wholeheartedly endorsed by yours truly. I can really identify with that kind of strong protective urge. I am a mellow person on the surface, but if you threaten me and mine, I will fucking end you. Period.

I strongly suggest you read both letters. The second is the antidote to the first.

On to more fun stuff, as in, this truly epic tale of criminal stupidity from Charlottetown, my old stomping grounds, where I went to University.

I will attempt to summarize. Schmuck is picked up for being drunk in public after dancing down the middle of University Avenue (super busy) with a beer in one hand and a cheeseburger in the other.

Already hilarious. But it gets better.

They go to stick schmuck in a cell, but while changing from his street clothes to prison togs, a presumably naked schmuck says “Hey, you guys ever see Cyril Sneer“, then tucks his penis between his legs, bends over, and hops around.

I swear to God, I am not making that up. This story includes an incredibly obscene impression of the villain from The Raccoons.

I could not make that up. Even my perverted imagination has limits.

So during his no doubt hilarious impression (seriously, how does one acquire that skill), the police notice the edge of a plastic bag sticking out of of schmuck’s rectum.

Yup. Schmuck is packing drugs in his rear compartment. So what might have just been a night in the drunk tank turns into a drug possession charge (4 hits of Hydromorphone for schmuck, and all because of his Cyril Sneer Naked Dance.

And all in little old Charlottetown, back home on Prince Edward Island.

The story could not be more perfectly Canadian.

And speaking of perfect Canadian stories, this one is going around the Internet.

And in this one, we get to make fun of Americans! Joy.

Seems an off-duty cop from Kalamazoo was in Calgary and some people who were giving away free tickets to the Stampede approached him to ask if he had been to the Stampede yet.

Clearly, this was an argument that said off-duty cop should have been able to carry a concealed gun!

At least, that is what said cop argued in a letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald.

Here is his version of the encounter :

Recently, while out for a walk in Nose Hill Park, in broad daylight on a paved trail, two young men approached my wife and me. The men stepped in front of us, then said in a very aggressive tone: “Been to the Stampede yet?”

We ignored them. The two moved closer, repeating: “Hey, you been to the Stampede yet?”

I quickly moved between these two and my wife, replying, “Gentle-men, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye.” They looked bewildered, and we then walked past them.

I speculate they did not have good intentions when they approached in such an aggressive, disrespectful and menacing manner. I thank the Lord Jesus Christ they did not pull a weapon of some sort, but rather concluded it was in their best interest to leave us alone.

Would we not expect a uniformed officer to pull his or her weapon to intercede in a life-or-death encounter to protect self, or another? Why then should the expectation be lower for a citizen of Canada or a visitor? Wait, I know – it’s because in Canada, only the criminals and the police carry handguns.

Some people think this is an expert level troll pulling our chains, but the Herald insists that it is the text of a real letter they received.

I know which I prefer was true. I want it to be a real letter so I can laugh at it. What kind of a pussy gets that threatened by two guys trying to give them free tickets then feels all macho when they go away, but still wishes he had been packing heat?

I picture this guy as a shrimpy little guy already a little freaked out by the simply enormous culture shock between the US and here (these clean streets can only be the product of COMMUNISM) who then gets approached by a few big Alberta rednecks and covers his own cowering fear by pretending like they were some big deal threat. Fools the wife, or so he thinks.

Pathetic, really. Yes, you are right, in Canada only the cops and the crooks have handguns. And that is exactly how we like it, because it means that Canada is so safe that nobody else even feels the desire to have one.

Maybe that is because we are not surrounded by cowardly paranoid Americans with gun fetishes, just itching for an opportunity to commit legal murder with their oversized phallic symbol.

Just a thought.

That is it for this week, folks! Tomorrow, we tackle some way cool Science stories!

See you then!