Pink Shirt Day

As an amateur blogger, computerizer, and social media enthusiast, I have become fairly adept at working with simple 2D graphic images and layouts. It’s something I enjoy doing, and have discovered that using images conveys concisely whatever your take happens to be, on whatever theme, scheme, or dream in your midst - a fine way of challenging the norm from within the confines of an X by X pixel frame.

My latest quip was to put a couple of lines of text above and beneath an image of a textiles sweatshop pic I found using Google. I did this as a response to the anti-bully movement perpetuating itself (I'd provide examples, but you can imagine some of the fluff) through the trending of #pinkshirtday on Twitter:

I understand the gravity of singling-out some hapless kid at school, and understand fully how severely upsetting and even dangerous bullying can be. Needless to say, relentlessly picking on someone innocent is quite inexcusable behaviour. I've just always had a general skepticism about any sort of mass movement in general, and while solidarity can be a positive force for change (it takes a paradigm shift brought about through power in numbers), more often than not it seems that with some attitudinal shifts come unanticipated and sometimes unintended consequences. 

Blah, blah, blah. All it is to me - this wear-a-pink-shirt-or-else day is just causation for me to consider a scenario where little... let's call him Alphonse, hasn't the means to get a pink shirt in time for the big day. Sure... someone would probably lend him one given the importance of such a momentous day, but oh, the shame of only being included thanks to someone else's pity! Not to mention his folks weren't even clever enough to think to use some of the diluted red food colouring at the back of their barren cupboard as a pink-wash to dye a white shirt (beet juice works too)... all the stores are out of pink shirts now anyway. 

Naturally, I then imagine all the pink-shirted kids ganging-up on poor Alphonse, stuffing him into a locker in an impulsive fit of reverse-bullyism; believing him to be a bully-sympathizer because he could only manage to scrounge a silk bowling shirt with fuchsia stripes inside the arms from out of his abusive step-dad's laundry pile. 

... and that is my idea of bullying Indian Chief Theresa Spence who is known in some Canadian circles (I've seen it online) as "Thief Theresa Spends", the pride of Attawapiskat, champion of the people's rights, and alleged embezzler who requests one-on-one meetings with both the Queen of England and the Prime Minister of Canada, PLUS the Governor General all at once, and all while undergoing a supposed hunger strike in a tee-pee on an island in the middle of the Ottawa river, etc., etc., etc... actually, it sounds pretty romantic when you think about it... 

Sometimes I make little screens like the one above, thinking I'm so clever, while the thing I "made" had pretty much already been done, and I'm unwittingly taking credit for someone who actually beat me to the punch. The pet store guffaw above is an example of just such a gaffe, I think.

The only politics I find more scintillatingly disappointing than American Politics are the politics of my home Province - the province in which I was born, the home of the Edmonton Oilers, foothills to the Rocky Mountains, and gateway to the north country, with it's official provincial motto being Wild Rose Country, and unofficially known as God's Country, Alberta, CANADA.

I could go into how I felt about how our former premiere, Ed Stelmach, how he courted all manner of shit I staunchly disagreed with at the time, like ushering in T.I.L.M.A., or funding a wildly expensive CO2 capturing facility, but what good is it? I should digress, however, that I may have to promptly stick my foot in my mouth as I see our current Premier using that very same CO2 sequestration facility as a bargaining chip to trump the unreasonable demands of the enviromoney opponents. Those sly, soft-spoken agents of stagnation who comfortably sit at their international CO2 craps table with their big money and their New York liberal clout?

Still, the numbers don't lie, and being $22 billion in debt - only eleven years after King Ralph got us back in the black - is just exhausting! I mean, I could understand our budget barely breaking even after a run of bad luck, the ever more demanding unions of the public servants, but our current provincial debt seems drastically excessive for a region as incredibly resource rich as Alberta is, no? It's hard to imagine these Albertan politicians wanting anything less than the best for their fellow Albertans, so I hope they are working with Alberta's best long-term interests at heart.    

I dunno. I think it's pretty funny. A little jab at the whole horse meat debacle.

I also don't know what to think about the image above. I didn't take the photo myself, so I've no idea if it was staged or what. Hopefully it's just some ruse for impact, but I thought I'd add the wording and make one of those cool amotivational posters out of it. I could never drink a snake's blood to fulfill some weird ritualistic requirements I don't understand. As you know from my #pinkshirtday ranting, I'm not too big on mob mentality or peer pressure. Sometimes I'll enjoy acting the fool for a good laugh, but I gotta draw the line at playing with serpents for macho points.

Here's a picture I shamelessly scanned in from the front page of The Edmonton Journal. It's a titanic module on it's way to Fort McMurray. Even though it will only be moving at a top speed of 25 km/h, I imagine it will nonetheless endure some shock and vibration along the way. I suppose if it cannot stand up to a few bumps in the road, it shan't be ready to contain steam pressure or whatever it's purpose is without a few post-transit touch-ups. In any respect, it's pretty gosh darn amazing!

That's all I've got for now, so I'm going to just go ahead and publish this article as is. It'll be an early night for this poor amateur freelance political hacktivist blogger, and I feel so bloated right now, I don't think I'll bother with hyperlinks and all that jazz.