Monthly Archives: March 2007

| Blogosphere, Humour, Media, TV

Tivijournal: “Budgets are not funny”

I spent this afternoon observing a taping of some segments of Tivijournal, a French sketch-comedy show produced by former UQAM journalism students.

The juicy bits will have to wait until the article comes out next Saturday, but for now you can mark your calendars for Wednesday, April 4 at 8:30pm, when they’ll be making their next showing (free) at the Pas Sages bar on Rachel. Coincidentally, the next Yulblog meeting will be the same night, at the same time, right across the street at la Quincaillerie. Tivijournal is usually on Tuesdays, so this should be a one-time thing.

| Blogosphere, On the Net

Will creativity never cease?

The easy-to-update nature of blogging software has allowed a lot of interesting websites to spring up. Most are the usual personal blogs, photo blogs, webcomics, but some are beyond explanation.

Among those on my bookmark list are Indexed, which features nothing but Venn diagrams on index cards, there’s the made-in-Montreal Regret the Error, which follows newspaper corrections, there’s Worst Than Failure (formerly The Daily WTF), which has snippets of horrible computer code, and Overheard in New York, a collection of weird and funny quotes anonymously overheard which has spawned countless copycat websites around the world.

Now Hippopocampe points us to WTFCNN?, which highlights the more eyebrow-raising headlines on CNN’s website, usually about oddball stories.

As if enough of my day isn’t filled with reading silly things online.

P.S. Now’s about the time to give a shout out to my new favourite web comic: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

| In the news

Election roundup

I’ll spare you the he-said- he-said- his-party-issued-a-press-release- his-party-issued-one-too-so-he-wouldn’t-be-left-out of the campaign stories today, but there are some interesting tidbits.

André Boisclair, I guess thinking that he wasn’t getting enough controversy, has decided to weigh in on the latest reasonable accomodation debate involving Muslim women that somehow has become an issue only during this election (did Muslim women not vote in 2003?). The odd thing about it is that yet again Boisclair is taking the “it’s unreasonable” side of the debate. I thought the PQ was supposed to be the left-wing party? And I thought left-wing people were pro-Muslim? They are at Concordia at least.

Then I think back to Boisclair’s major talking point: “The regions.” He’s not courting votes in Montreal, he’s going after rural communities. The poorer, Catholic, xenophobic areas like Hérouxville that could go to any of the three parties. So while his party thinks of itself as enlightened (after all, it elected an openly gay leader), he’s pushing it into Reform Party-like xenophobia.

Meanwhile, Peggy Curran is implying that activist students, who were denouncing Charest and Dumont (but didn’t seem to mention Boisclair), are taking a pro-PQ stance, despite claiming they’re not partisan. I wonder if these students agree with the PQ leader’s interpretation of what a reasonable accomodation is.

Dumont is apologizing for a candidate in Abitibi-Est whose “business” website apparently accused Jews of a worldwide financial conspiracy or something, while discussing “questions of international finance and banking in an awkward way.” Sure, if by “awkward” you mean “complete nutcase.” Oooh, let’s make all the links move back and forth and choose random colours for everything. I’ve seen 12-year-olds make better websites on MySpace. And read more coherent economic analyses from them too.

I can’t seem to find the offending text through the WayBack machine, though its latest version of the site is from a year ago.

The Gazette’s Saroj Bains has videos up of the three campaign buses: Kevin Dougherty on the Liberal bus, Hubert Bauch on the PQ bus, and Mario Dumont gives a tour of the ADQ bus. Apparently a fancy coffee machine is enough to keep the reporters in line.

| Media

This post is incomple

The meta-media is all atwitter about a joint story between the Ottawa Citizen and Globe and Mail (also: National Post, Victoria Times-Colonist) about a con artist who got himself into witness protection (despite his information being fictional) and eventually killed someone using his new identity. Except, because of the witness protection rules, they can’t give any details about the murder or his life after entering the program.

Despite that nagging absence, the story still reads like a Law & Order story.

| Blogosphere, Humour, Video

Simple is effective

Andy Riga has some picks for favourite Quebec election videos, but this one (via 321Blogue) takes the cake by simply choosing some good video and creatively slowing it down to make Jean Charest and Mario Dumont appear completely wasted.

Meanwhile, at least one independent candidate (in Outremont) has a website up that puts some of the major party ones to shame. He’s financing his campaign through his videos (the sites are starting to pay contributors whose videos generate lots of traffic), but at about 150 views so far he has quite a ways to go.

UPDATE: For those worried he was left out, Drunk Boisclair is here.