Junction Rocks!

'Dim Son' alert - y'all know who I'm talkin' about - the 'Master of Disaster': GW Bush. He's giving his 'State of the Union' address tonight - should be a gut buster. Here's an advance copy of little Ceasar's State of the Union speech:

Some post election humour here.

Ok, let me get this off my chest first - PM Steven Harper: Ewwwwww. Now really, after last nights predictable PC minority 'victory', we can take solice in the actual numbers and see that Canada is not in danger of falling to the Prarie Taliban after all. The breakdown is as follows: Conservatives 36% Liberals 30% NDP 18% Bloc 10% Greens & others 5%. That means 63% of the voters, voted centre or centre-left. Combine that number with the 40% of Canadians who were too apathetic or for whatever reasons, didn't bother to vote and Harpers 36% looks even less like any kind of a mandate. Lucky for us, Stephen Harper is contained by a fairly tight leash where social issues are concerned, and for this we can be happy. To boot, the NDP upped their seats in Parliament by 10 and one of those seats now belongs to my MP, Peggy Nash! (left in above photo) Yippee! This government will inevitably collapse in 10 to 18 months, as most minority governments do.

So says art, architecture and cultural critic John Bentley Mays in his most recent article in the Globe and Mail.

"Suddenly, people are in love with Toronto again. They are making music and art and magazines in its busy cultural scenes, haunting laneways in search of marks made by the city’s feral children and finding secrets long hidden underground, busily writing down and talking about what their hungry readings of the archives and the very ground are turning up." I received the monthly newsletter from Coach House Books . It seems that uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto is doing quite well financially. Pages Books and Magazines told Quill and Quire that the book has made it onto the store's Top 10 bestselling-books-of-all-time list.

In related news, uTOpia: Towards a New Toronto contributors Adam Vaughan and Nicole Cohen, and Robert Rennick, a teacher at Inglenook Community High School who is responsible for the only high school course on utopia currently on offer, discuss how to move Toronto to the next level at the Canadian Urban Institute's Roundtable Breakfast Seminar Series. The event takes place at Metro Hall (55 John St., Toronto) in Room 308/309, and begins at 7:45 a.m. Tickets are $32 for members and $40 for non-members.

Hey, did y'all know it's NATIONAL SANCTITY OF HUMAN LIFE DAY, in the USA? It's also the 33rd anniversay of ROE VS WADE - hmmm, go figure. Click HERE to see other ways in which George Bush celebrates the 'sanctity of human life'. I'm sure if Stephan Harper's Conservatives get elected with a majority government tomorrow, we'll soon have our own 'National Sanctity of Human Life' day to celebrate.

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. This is one of my most favorite sites on the net. I visit it often and I'm always amazed and touched by the powerful work submitted. It's such a wonderful concept. The first solo PostSecret exhibit was mounted in January; 15,000 people attended the show, 1,100 books were sold and The Washington Post called it, "one of the five best art exhibitions in Washington in 2005".

This is fucked and shows just how far down the rabbit hole the USA has fallen.
"An alumni group is offering students up to $100 per class to supply tapes and notes exposing University of California, Los Angeles professors who allegedly express extreme left-wing political views. The year-old Bruin Alumni Association on its Web site says it is concerned about professors who use lecture time to press positions against President Bush, the military and multinational corporations, among other things." full story here It's a slippery slope down to Fascism if you want to start monitoring classrooms for signs of political descent. In fact, maybe America is already there, after all; don't all Fascist leaders claim they have the right to unilaterally spy on, torture, and assassinate anyone they deem to be a threat to their country/régime?

It always surprises people when I tell them my neighbourhood was dry up until a few years ago - yes, that's right, no bars or liquor stores for miles. Whilst trolling the internets, I found this article written in Eye magaine circa 1998, which was the first year anybody had been able to legally sit in a bar and sip an alcoholic beverage in 94 years. "The last time a restaurant served booze in Toronto's Junction District, all hell broke loose. "As many as 5,000 strangers thronged the Junction streets," recorded the Toronto Star, creating scenes that were "phenomenal and offensive." The six hotels and three cops in the area were kept busy as scores of drunks "half-crazed with liquor" got into brawls and acted like pigs." Think Spring Break or Mardi Gras, except with beards, bonnets and bad teeth. Anyway, you can read the entire piece here to get a good idea about the history of prohibition in the West Toronto Junction.

"HALIFAX--Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says he's ready to reopen the debate over Canadian participation in the American missile defence system. The missile defence initiative, combined yesterday with a Harper pledge to turn his back on the Kyoto accord and his refusal to endorse a $5 billion deal for aboriginal aid, could signal the type of major policy realignment Canadians can expect under a Harper government." I can only hope that Harper continues to roll-out his true Conservative agenda in advance of January 23rd. Here is a good link to reference polls and seat projections. Another great resource is howtheyvote.ca . "Have you ever wondered how your member of parliament has been voting? We've made it easy for you to find out! Contained herein are many of the pivotal votes in the House of Commons, complete with voting history, dissention, attendance and speaking habits."

I was kicking around with some peeps yesterday and we got to chatting about how we spent the Sunday after a friend's drunken B-day party. Turns out we all ended up watching the day long marathon of "Miami Ink' on TLC. Now, I'm not a big cable girl but I do finger the remote once and a while, however, I had never run across this particular reality show. It chronicles the life of a group of Tattoo artists that have set up shop in Miami. I was really impressed with the story lines, not to mention the calibre of artwork these people produce. My favourite and everybody's fav, is the only female ink-slinger on the show. Her name is 'Kat Vond D' and she rocks in every way. Kat's artistry is stunning and she is only 23! Her style gravitates toward portraits and realism, mostly on a black and gray scale but her colour stuff kicks ass too. Here is a link to her website where you can check out some of her work in detail. Awesome!

God Help Us All!
Can I tell you how freaked out I am of the impending Tory government majority in the upcoming election. According to a new national poll completed yesterday, the Conservatives are charting a course toward a majority on Jan. 23. The thought of waking up on the 24th to a Prime Minister Stephen Harper is down right creepy and just plain wrong, yet how much more of the liberal corruption scandals can this country take? There is some small comfort in the fact that at least we have the balls to vote out our corrupt politicians even if it means replacing them with an equally corrupt, radical, right-wing conservative machine. In either case, it does not bode well for the direction of this country, but much worse if Harper and his band of fundamentalist neo-cons are granted power. The best I can hope for is a conservative minority with the NDP picking up some well deserved new seats. I'll be voting for Peggy Nash (NDP) in the Parkdale/Highpark riding. She's my kind of gal - a straight shooter with a strong committment to medicare, the environment, women's rights, job protecion and fare wages, cultural issues/arts funding and a host of other social justice causes. Plus, she's actually lived in the hood for 20 years - know what I mean, Sam?

That's Peggy (see photo above) with Mayor Miller and actor/activist Danny Glover at the Community Forum for the Hotel Workers on December 3rd, 2005. The forum was organized to support the hotel workers in their campaign for better wages and working conditions.

Came across some joyous photos of New Mind Space's 'Ride The Reindeer' Xmas subway party. Shindigs like these are one of the reasons Toronto is such a great city to live in. Check out the groovy subway pins too - you can order them on-line at spacing.

Spacing's Shawn Micallef has an interesting piece in Maisonneuve discussing Toronto's fragile ego.

"There are bad songs that offend our sensibilities but can still be enjoyed, and then there are the songs that are just really bad—transcendentally bad, objectively bad.The "humps" in question belong to Fergie, who brandishes her "lovely lady lumps" for the purpose of procuring various gifts from men who, one would assume, find the prospect of "lumps" very exciting—one lump begetting another lump, if you will." You can read the entire article at Slate. Funny stuff.

Toronto's city councillors are determind to sell every last inch of our public space to the higest bidder. Case in point - those god awful billboards (garbage/recycling bins) lurking all over the GTA. Poorly designed and towering above the average human, they are as useless as they are dangerous. Not only is it difficult to tell which slot to put your garbage in but their size, 2.3 metres tall and about 1.5 metres wide, cuts off your view of the road and the sidewalk. There are several in the Junction - notably the one at Dundas and Pacific which regularly has garbage spilling out of it's narrow trash slots. In the next few months, the City’s Works Committee will vote on whether to approve the EUCAN monster garbage bin pilot project. Remember, these are billboards first, and trash bins second. For more info on what you can do to prevent these monstrosities from taking over our city, visit the Public Space website. Junction peeps can contact city councillor Bill Saundercook directly at (416) 338-5165.

A good article summing up the situation by Christopher Hume of the Toronto Star.