Asstro --NSFW

Chilean indie electro-pop group Astro released this video recently. Gizmodo had it as their "Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight." NSFW in most places. Goofy as hell.

Something's Coming

No one expected the Battle for Seattle. The Arab Spring was unforeseen. So  was the explosion of Occupy. And now the Canadian government is facing Idle No More and the hunger strike of  Attawapiskat Chief  Theresa Spence.
Ever since MP Charlie Angus brought his constituents issues before the House and the Canadian people, the Harper government has handled things badly. First, it was claimed that the Chief and band were incompetent at managing and a non-First Nations manager was dispatched to clean up the mess. That story stuck with a few Canadians, but then the Attawapiskat band threw the manager off the reserve and refused to pay him--after all, he was to be paid a percentage of what was already seen to be an inadequate budget. As Michael Posluns writes in SLAW (the Canadian online law magazine):

I have witnessed Third Party Management. Not much good can be said about it. The outside manager typically begins by freezing all the band’s accounts, and opening up an account in his own name, often at his own bank. He does not spend much time in the community; he may administer Attawapiskat from Timmins or from Toronto. If Duncan’s appointment is true to form for TPMs past, he may have some managerial experience but he will also have a record of longstanding service to the governing party.

When he closes or freezes all the band’s accounts all the band’s programs stop. I’ve seen situations where summer employment programs, hot lunch programs, recreation programs, road maintenance and everything else that is needed to sustain a community came to a screeching half. The only person who continues to get paid is the TPM himself. Typically, he pays himself 25% of the band’s income for the period he is there.

Yup, the Third Party Manager shuts everything down, takes 25% of the money, and then pretty much does what his political masters tell him to.

Bus!

Awesome, awesome bus commercial. I am so dismayed we don't do stuff like this here. And the bus looks terrific....

This Is Not An Enbridge Animation

From the Dogwood Initiative website:

Last Saturday, Dave Shortt emerged from 10 days of filming in the northern B.C. bush, found a wi-fi connection at the Kitimat library and happened upon a story online about Enbridge being criticized for deleting islands in the Douglas Channel from a video animation.

“I had this eureka moment,” Shortt says. The 38-year-old filmmaker had been filming along Enbridge’s proposed pipeline route with an eye to putting together a five-minute video to help raise awareness about the areas at risk and encourage people to sign Dogwood’s petition at notankers.ca.

“The plan was to film for another week or two but then I read the story about omitting the islands and I realized that’s what the video should be about,” he said on Wednesday afternoon from his camper van parked outside the Prince Rupert Safeway store. “It’s about trying to bring some reality to what’s at risk.”

Shortt knew the media interest in the missing islands would pass quickly, so he needed to get the video posted pronto. “It was 10 in the morning, but I still needed to finish filming because I didn’t have the shots of Kitimat yet,” Shortt says.

He quickly got the shots he needed, then headed back to the Kitimat library where he spent four hours editing the video — but then he hit a road block. “I had to sit as close to the wireless internet as possible, but it wasn’t suitable for uploading or transferring data. I realized it was going to be like three hours,” Shortt says.

While he battled with the wi-fi, Shortt’s friend asked the librarian if she knew anywhere with fast Internet in town and she recommended the rec centre. And that’s how it came to be that Shortt launched his soon-to-be-viral video into the world from the lobby of the Kitimat Rec Centre — humble beginnings for 100 seconds of footage that have been viewed more than 34,000 times in four days, driven 4,500 new signatures to the No Tankers petition and drawn the attention of the Huffington Post, Toronto Star, Vancouver Province and Canada AM.