It’s brilliant.

I love the use of funny graphics (although not the crypto-racist “gypsy” designation, dating one of the Romani people, as I do).

Personally, I acknowledge that I had totally amazing parents, and was given plenty of opportunity.  But I still was required to work at McDonald’s at age 15 if I wanted spending money, and I still had to take out lots of student loans to get through university.

My Dad also gave me great career advice, free of charge, which I heeded.  If you are deciding on a career for yourself – and I was, eyeballing law and/or journalism at the time – do your best to make sure they aren’t career paths leading to a dead end, he said.  So, after putting in some time at the Calgary Herald and Ottawa Citizen (and not because I foresaw the Internet or whatever), I figured the traditional media was an industry going down, not up.  Same with law: the law schools were handing out way too many diplomas, and – from my perch at the Toronto and Ottawa law firms where I toiled – lawyers weren’t heeding the complaints clients were making, increasingly, about huge fees.  Too many lawyers, not enough clients: not good.

Generation Y, here’s my advice to you, gratis: you are indeed special, but that does not relieve you of the obligation to work your ass off.  Nor should you ignore the warning signs all around you: that is, if something seems like it’s too easy, that’s because it probably is.

Do what makes you happy, and do what you’re good at.  That way, you’ll be happy to come into work, and you’ll frankly be amazed that someone wants to pay you to do something you love.

Oh, and get your head out of your ass, too.  It’s a tough old world, and it doesn’t take prisoners.

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Quote:

“…Described by publisher Harper Collins as a “candid memoir,” the book is just one part of a carefully planned year-long strategy developed by Chow and her advisers to win the next mayor’s race and oust Rob Ford from office.

 

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Wanna feel old?

Read these grafs, from the column I’ve filed for Sunday.  TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY THE RED BOOK CAME OUT.

Holy crap, do I ever feel old.

“…So we put out the Red Book. It was 112 pages long, it was bursting at the seams with ideas, and it provided an effective rebuttal to the Conservatives’ nasty insinuations. “I’ve got the team, I’ve got the plan,” Chretien would say, over and over, at every whistle-stop along the way to a massive Parliamentary majority. 

 The debate about when to release the thing went on almost as long as the writing of it. All at once? In pieces? Before the election? In week one? In Ottawa, or elsewhere?

 Chretien made the final decision, appropriately. The Red Book would be released on September 19, 1993, eleven days after the campaign began. We printed up thousands of copies, and they were all gone by lunchtime. Bureaucrats figured we were going to win, and they wanted to get a head start on their homework.” 

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Pere Ubu’s, that is.  Been listening to them since I was 15 years old (which, if you are familiar with their oeuvre, should tell you plenty about how truly odd Yours Truly is).  I would’ve posted ‘Blow Daddy-o,’ which I want played at my funeral, but I couldn’t find a good version for you.

Anyway, seeing them tonight with Lala, and am plenty pumped about it.  Here’s their biggest ‘hit,’ which really wasn’t one.  I love how cranky and miserable he looks.  Fits.

PERE UBU / Final Solution, live @ Ypsigrock Festival 2011 from Giacomo Triglia on Vimeo.

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Here. It’s kind of boring, so suggestions about how to make it more useful to you guys would be gratefully accepted.

If nothing else, it’s an offset to what a lunatic in Ottawa did on Wikipedia. Check that out, and ask yourself who might have written it.

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They get knocked a lot. But on this occasion, they acted swiftly and in the right way. Her family has suffered enough.

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…and other things, too. The first confirmation, here:

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Full disclosure: we at Daisy Group have been working with the plaintiffs in this historic case for years, always focussed on getting to this day. We are very confident that these children (now adults) will – after a long, long wait – finally receive the justice they deserve.

Stay tuned. The trial starts at 10 a.m., and we will be there.

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Politicians don’t get credit for very much most days. So, credit where credit’s due: Federal leaders have acquitted themselves well in the days since the Parti Quebecois unleashed its bigoted “charter.”

They could have remained quiet. They could have maintained what Brian Mulroney once amusingly called “a courageous silence.” But they didn’t.

Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was the first to denounce the PQ’s scheme, which will see the wearing of religious symbols outlawed in public places. Despite the fact he has been dismissed as a policy lightweight — despite the fact he represents a francophone Quebec riding, where the broad outlines of the charter arguably remain popular — Trudeau roundly condemned the hateful proposal. He even met with Quebec’s loathsome premier, Pauline Marois, to express his opposition face-to-face.

NDP boss Thomas Mulcair at first seemed intent on avoiding any comment on the charter. When pressed, Mulcair — who, like Trudeau, knows a deep vein of nativism runs through Quebec politics — would only say the charter was a “trial balloon.”

But when the foul document was unveiled, Mulcair did not hide. Speaking from a New Democrat caucus meeting in Saskatchewan, Mulcair roundly condemned the PQ plan. Calling it “worse than we feared,” Mulcair, whose caucus is made up with more than a few who have voted for sovereignty in the past, said he, too, would oppose the Parti Quebecois charter.

And Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada? Initially, he was completely mute on the subject, which has the potential to preoccupy national politics for months. Harper admitted he was being cautious, because “the separatist government in Quebec would love to pick fights with Ottawa.”

He went on: “Our job is making all groups that come to this country — whatever their background, whatever their race, whatever their ethnicity, whatever their religion — feel at home in this country and be Canadians. That’s our job.”

Indeed it is. After the full putrescence of the PQ’s ethnic jihad became clear, Harper sent out one of his key ministers, Jason Kenney, to warn a constitutional challenge — which Ottawa would win easily — is likely. Kenney went even further, calling the PQ plan something out of Monty Python. And, amusingly, Kenney even made certain to be photographed wearing the sort of head covering Marois’ cabal wish to render illegal.

So far, so good. What will happen next?

Early indications are that things are not going swimmingly for the Parti Quebecois. A Bloc Québécois MP denounced the plan, and then was expelled from the party exposing a nasty rift within separatist ranks along the way. Public enthusiasm for the proposal has seemingly dissipated in Quebec.

Premiers in British Columbia and Ontario have said they welcome all people, of all ethnicities. Municipal leaders have made appeals for Quebecers to move to Alberta and Ontario.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Canada, folks have responded in clever, effective ways. A former Dalton McGuinty staffer developed a popular ad campaign for an Ontario hospital, advising Quebec medical professionals that Ontarians value what is in one’s head, not what is on it.

The battle for a diverse, united Canada never really ends. But it has been encouraging to see our leaders (and our citizens) respond with one voice to racism and bigotry.

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