1. It fills the void of a bleak reality, and a social life thats about as exciting as watching paint dry.

4. If we can’t get our jollies by “poking” people in real life, might as well do it through facebook.

And last but not least:

5. Someone’s gotta be “friends” with that chick thats been done 25 times might as well be…..?

Dear facebook, I cannot express in words my love for you and all the meaningful relationships you have facilitated!

Thank you

Purplehaze
**takes a bow***

We recently lost one of our own, Purplehaze, to the scourge of facebook. I hope he is not lost in that cliquey world of self-important posing. Facebook is the vanguard for the normalization of shallow “relationships”. Here’s a great article by Tom Hodgkinson of the Guardian.

Here is an ad in the Toronto Sun placed by the Toronto Police Association that asks for Toronto Mayor Miller to give Cops a day off on “Family Day”, the new slightly controversial provincial holiday. At first I laughed, thinking Family Day would be a perfect day for a crime spree, until my wife pointed out that the association was probably asking for a day off in lieu of Family day. Basically, she ruined the whole original premise of this post, which was going to bash cops for thinking they could just take a day off and let anarchy rule.

But while we’re on the topic…

The fact that we need a “Family Day” is evidence that we just don’t have time for important stuff anymore. Next we’ll have an “Eating Day” and “Sex With Your Spouse Day”.

Then again, it’s not much different than Valentines Day and Father’s/Mother’s day. All single days of the year designated for doing something you should always be doing - loving people. Valentines day is a good day for douchebags to go all-out and buy frilly useless pink shit, to make up for the fact that they’re douchebags year-round.

So if you don’t get Family Day off, don’t complain like those pussies in the Toronto Police Association, who are probably so sad about not getting Family Day off that they’ll have to beat up 36 poor people just to feel better. Just spend time with your family.

A couple of weeks ago, Vladimir Putin was named “Person of the year 2007″ by Times magazine.
Bush was named “Person of the year 2004″. Did you remember ? I did.

The reason I remembered was because the titles were both very similar. I was using the same source of information three years ago: The BBC.
The BBC is known to be “free from both political and commercial influence” according to its charter. It’s not only the charter of course that gives this new network neutrality but the way it is structure.

This sctructure recently changed. In fact it changed in 2007. I did not bother following the exact changes. The changes were out of my scope of interest. An obvious change was advertising for the non british users on the BBC pages. Of course this does not mean that the BBC was ‘unbiased’ beforehand. It just shows a trend.

I thought it would be interesting to make a parallel between the article written on Bush and the one written on Putin.

I will let you be the judge. The point is not to say who is better and who is worse but how our minds get shaped.
In the western world we have a very wrong image of Russia and Russians. It is only after spending some time over there that I had realized that I had been somehow brainwashed.
I can’t blame people for getting brainwashed. When you fall in the traps of continous entertainement and the whole “work more to pay your entertainement” it is very hard to slow down and take the time to think about anything.

Links from the BBC:
Putin man of the year 2007
Bush man of the year 2007