Pretty self-explanatory…
“Feel The Bern” – Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Head Tale
Yet Another Librarian's Blog
Sanders vs. Clinton: Favorabiilty = Electable #demdebate
One of the most revealing graphics I’ve seen during the current Democratic contest…
Saturday Snap – Happy Anniversary to Me!
I had to work this weekend so Shea took the kids to spend a couple days enjoying the beautiful +13 weather at her parents’ house in Weyburn.
I can’t decide if getting to go to the Bushwakkers for supper tonight (which we rarely get to since it’s a pub with a “no kids allowed” policy) was unintentionally her anniversary gift to me? 😉
Cheers – love you Shea!
Friday Fun Link – Inside Out (Without the “Inside” Parts)
Recent Academy Award “Best Animated Feature” winner, Pixar’s “Inside Out” was one of the best movies released last year. Part of the appeal was how it used cartoonish illustrations to show the interplay of emotions within a person’s head.
But what happens if you take away the “inside” parts? You still end up with a pretty cool short film (which makes me wonder if the filmmakers did this on purpose?)
Throwback Thursday – #tbt – World’s Biggest Tomato (April 2006)
When we lived in Ontario in 2006, Shea and I tried to get away to visit different nearby areas as often as we could.
There’s been a lot of attention lately on French’s decision to start making ketchup in Canada using tomatoes from the Leamington, ON area after Heinz left the community high and dry in 2014.
Shea and I were fortunate to visit Leamington, see the (at the time) Heinz factory (from the outside only – didn’t have time for a tour unfortunately) and get our picture taken by the World’s Biggest Tomato ™.
Great Summary of the Crazy US Election So Far…
Who would have believed a year ago that the Democratic Party would be imploding while trying to stifle their ideological base to take down a socialist who is out-fundraising everyone to preserve a Wall Street backed candidate whose approval ratings were less than desirable before their FBI scandal but you wouldn’t be able to even follow that on the news because the guy from “The Apprentice” had just wheeled and dealed his way to GOP frontrunner on a platform of building a literal border wall.
(via Reddit)
A Super Long List of #SuperTuesday Random Thoughts
Well, not really. Honestly, I don’t know what else to say other than this has easily been the craziest election campaign I have seen in my life (as foretold by the great movie, “Idocracy”!)
Two outsider candidates are threatening the establishment insiders of both parties and the “Kang or Kodos” politics of barely distinguishable two-party candidates that we’re used to.
Donald Trump (Drumpf!) is dominating the Republican contest in a way that few foresaw by tapping into a weird blend of people’s fascination with wealth, pop culture, xenophobia and ‘Murica!
On the Democratic side, a wild-haired lifetime (democratic) socialist has basically come out of nowhere to become a legitimate challenger to one of the most well-known, well-financed, well-connected candidates in history. He’s done this by inspiring a legion of young, tech-savvy millennials to give record-setting amounts of small donations while denouncing traditional SuperPACs and corporate donations as he pursues a wholesale political revolution.
It’s been wild so far and I can only imagine what else we’ll see coming – people said Trump would eventually fall back to earth and he just keeps proving everyone wrong. People said Bernie Sanders was just a protest candidate and now he’s promising to take his campaign right to the Democratic convention in June in Philadelphia.
It’s going to be interesting!
Music Monday – “Some other way/There’s got to be another way/We all are scientists who will not be afraid/I’m not saying that there’s no hope for this/And you have tried to change my mind But we all know, our system’s broken/And I, I’ll never vote again”
I’ve had this blog since 2006 but perhaps surprisingly, I’ve never really acknowledged Leap Years even though I’ve been blogging for two of them in 2008 and 2012.
So let’s continue that trend by ignoring February 29, 2016 completely in favour of a song inspired by tomorrow’s Super Tuesday vote in the United States…
“Vote” – The Submarines (if you click through to SongMeanings.com, you’ll see a typo in the lyrics – the actual lyric is: “On Super Tuesday, I wanted to die”, not “On Two for Tuesday, I wanted to die”. The final lyric about never voting again is extremely cynical but not in the light of the fact that the duo who comprise the Submarines are a real life couple but had a break-up before Super Tuesday.)
FTRW 2016 – Day Seven – Saturday Snap – Freedom to Read in Cuba?
Below are a couple photos I took in Havana during our 2011 trip to Cuba.
This was a street vendor stall selling books (which is good!) but most here (and in our hotel’s gift shop or anywhere else we found books) were heavily propagandistic (bad!).
Cuba isn’t commercialized with billboards selling blue jeans and soda but in its place, there are numerous propaganda posters everywhere you look…
It’s an interesting dilemma – in Canada, we have a much freer, open society and working in a library, I see firsthand how we celebrate our willingness to provide access to any and all ideas (in fact, I tried to showcase this in my FTRW display this year by setting two non-fiction books with competing, potentially controversial ideas side-by-side.)
But at the same time, I sometimes wonder if that makes us more susceptible to being manipulated – by advertising and media outlets and biased educators and religious leaders and politicians and Internet memes and who knows what else?
Until next year…
