Review: The Story of Stuff, by Annie Leonard

Stuff. It’s all around us. Some of it is essential. Some of it is less essential. Some of it isn’t essential at all and some of it is totally ridiculous.

I’m a child of the 80s and a product of the intense awareness-raising campaigns that were done in schools back then to encourage recycling. If my mother is to be trusted (which she usually can be, unfortunately), I was a little ‘Green Nazi’: I would getnupset if every single little thing that was possibly recyclable didn’t get recycled. I think I might have scarred my poor parents to life.

Anyhow!

I myself was marked by this intensive campaign to be green by videos such as the one posted below. In it, a young boy leaves the water running while brushing his teeth, using up Frank the Fish’s natural habitat. Becoming a little desperate, Frank calls the young boy up and asks him to turn the tap water off.

It has always hit me, ever since those days, that most of the solutions to these problems seemed so simple, and it made me happy to be able to contribute to keeping the planet healthier (and Frank the Fish alive!). And this is why I’m always on the look-out for interesting and thought-provoking material to raise awareness around me, too, so that more people can help the environment. And that’s how I discovered The Story of Stuff.

The Story of Stuff is a great 20 minutes documentary film in which Annie Leonard gives us a detailed yet easily understandable explanation of the story of stuff: where it comes from, where it goes and what are the reasons behind the current obsession with companies to make us buy, buy and buy some more.

On the site, it is explained that: “From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

With over 4 million viewers as of September 2008, The Story of Stuff isn’t just about informing the public but also a call to action. However, the site doesn’t include something in the way of “Ten Steps to helping the World”, which I found quite disconcerting. A call for action without any helpful guidelines to how to do anything? How… Different.

Apparently I’m not the only person who thought along the same lines. A group of High School students produced a video in which they underline the fact that Annie Leonard provides a bleak portrait of the world without any concrete solution about what to do.

To which Annie Leonard answered the following:

“Why I am not offering “10 simple steps” to get involved.

(…) I intentionally didn’t include specific recommendations for action for a couple reasons: 1) the solutions don’t lend themselves to sound bites and 2) I don’t want to prescribe and limit the actions each viewer may choose to do.

(…) I didn’t want to lay out this massive critique of the interconnected environmental and social problems of our current global materials economy and then belittle both viewers and the diversity and breadth of the solutions by providing a pre-determined concise list of simple action steps. I did capitulate to those asking for lists of recommended actions by providing some suggestions but even this list includes just a sampling of the many ways to make a difference.

I don’t like simple lists of recommended actions because I believe what is needed can’t be captured in that format. As Michael Maniates, a professor at Allegheny College said in a recent Washington Post op-ed: “We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins, and this means changes and costs that our current and would-be leaders seem afraid to discuss. Which is a pity, since Americans are at their best when they’re struggling together, and sometimes with one another, toward difficult goals.” (See the full op-ed at WashingtonPost.com)

My goal in making The Story of Stuff was to encourage people to have this difficult conversation, to begin thinking and talking about these complicated issues. Our current ways of making, using and throwing away stuff is largely based on unsustainable and unjust systems yet, as a society, we’ve got this big collective blind spot about talking about this. Let’s raise the issues, let’s ask the hard questions, let’s get it on the table and examine it and debate it and figure out together how to move forward towards solutions.

As I said in the film, one of the good things about such an all pervasive problem is that there are so many points of intervention. We each need to find that intervention that matches our skill set and our passions. The passion piece is key, because it is going to be a long haul and we need to rely on our passions, the fire in our bellies for change, to see us through. So, I advised the students to find something that they feel passionate about and dive in.

There are as many ways to get involved as there are people who care. Are you outraged that your cosmetics and body care products have toxics that aren’t even labeled? Get a bunch of friends together and call the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to find out what can be done (www.safecosmetics.org). Are you concerned about what happens to your MP3 Player or computer when it dies? Call Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (www.svtc.org) and Basel Action Network (www.ban.org). Do you want to make local, organic food accessible and affordable? Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program or set up a farmers market in your town.Work for Health Care Reform. Adopt a green procurement policy at your company or school to mandate that purchases prioritize local and sustainable products. Look into the Renewable Fuels Portfolio is in your State and join with those working to increase it. Start a used book, tooland clothing swap program on your campus or community. Pressure local businesses to stop selling super toxic PVC plastic (http://www.besafenet.com/pvc/). Track your ecological footprint (http://www.footprintnetwork.org/). Work for mining reform (www.earthworksaction.org). Green your hospital (www.noharm.org). Register people to vote. Run for local office yourself. Have a monthly screening and discussion with films on these issues at your church or school. Make your campus Zero Waste. Work for Campaign Finance Reform.Talk to your neighbors about these issues. Fill your free time with friends rather than stuff. The list goes on and on…

You get the point. Everyone needs to find their own path; find the projects that we each can each do well and which excites us. There are so many options that we don’t even have to do something boring! And there are loads of organizations that can help provide direction on specific issues once we get started. See the list of organizations on the Story of Stuff website to start and check out www.wiserearth.org for even more.

It is less important what we chose to do than how we do it. To make all these activities add up to more than a list of “teachnological tweakings at the margins,”as Maniates describes it, whatever we eachdo must be part of a larger effort. We’ve got to get toxics out of cosmetics and reform the health care system and build local community and stop incinerators not as ends in themselves but as part of strengthening an active democracy, as part of transforming the current system to be in the service of community health, ecological stability and social justice.”

What a great response. And what a great challenge for all of us to take on!

I have to admit that I did find the questions of the High School students a little amusing in that there is one solution that seems to obvious: stop buying all the unnecessary junk. Does anyone remember a certain little song: “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refuse”? We seem to think that solutions to big problems are necessarily big, when at the end, the solutions are small but have to be implemented on a massive scale.

Think about one simple thing: single-use water bottles. Even if most of them are recyclable, 80% of the water bottles used in the US end up in a landfill. So the first step would be to start recycling those water bottles.

But before ‘recycle’ we have reduce: the best thing we can do is to stop using bottled water altogether, and stick to our reusable bottles. Since Americans buy 28 billions bottles of water a year, that would make a significant impact through a small action. But, again, the scope of this action has to be large: 28 billion purchases have to be stopped each year.

Simple, but huge.

So has The Story of Stuff inspired any form of activism?

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there has been an important response to Annie Leonard’s video, including Sarah’s (I know, how ironic) Consumption Challenge. I have posted the introductory video below and, for those of you interested in learning more about the challenge, finding out what possible snags and problems Sarah might have met during the challenge and even on taking the challenge, you should check out her other videos too. And if you do decide to take on the challenge, I encourage you to upload videos like Sarah’s and link them to hers and let me know so I can post them here, too.

Many people often ask me why the environment is so important to me. I tell them it’s because I started to realise a couple of years ago the scope of the implications of not doing anything that bolsters me. The importance of decreasing our carbon footprint doesn’t limit itself to saving the world from becoming warmer; it also means giving peace a chance.

Yes, you read me right, peace on earth is dependant on stopping global warming. Think about it. Global warming is causing a massive change in the weather patterns in the entire world. One such change is a pattern of droughts which have been plaguing such places as Eastern Africa and Southern America. It seems that these droughts, at first unusual, are becoming the norm. They render previously fertile lands arid, which destroys plantations they previously supported. This creates famines. Famines create tension as people fight more and more desperately to gain access to water and fertile lands. The fights escalade into full-fledged wars.

So next time you want to buy yourself a bottle of water or a thing that you don’t quite need, remember: you have more power to bring peace on the world than you thought possible.

Give peace a chance: reduce, reuse and recycle!

Review: Stephanie Nolen’s 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa

I’m currently reading a fantastic book. It’s amazingly written; the language is rich and eloquent, yet very easy to read. However, it is very difficult to read in that the content is quite harsh.

Many know the statistics: HIV has infected millions worldwide and AIDS has killed millions. Many also know that Africa is being devastated by this virus. Some know that there are drugs that can reverse AIDS into a life-long infection which, while sometimes difficult to manage, allows the person to live. This would greatly help increase the life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS has taken a bite out of other public health advances to reduce it to the late 30s. Imagine that: someone in Africa can only hope to live until their late 30s, a time at which in North America and Europe, people have happily settled into their married life and/or their careers.

But statistics don’t mean as much as the real stories behind them, which is what Stephanie Nolen brings to us in her book “28 Stories of AIDS in Africa“.

“From an internationally acclaimed journalist comes an extraordinary book that puts a human face on the AIDS crisis in Africa: twenty-eight vivid stories, one for each of the million Africans living with the virus.”

The most amazing thing about this book is that Nolen isn’t just reporting facts that she heard about or she observed while sitting in her hotel room sipping on something delicious, but rather that “in every instance, Nolen has borne witness to the stories she relates, whether riding with truck driver Mohammed Ali on a journey across Kenya; following Tigist Haile Michael, a smart, shy fourteen-year old Ethiopian orphan fending for herself and her baby brother on the slum streets of Addis Ababa; chronicling the heroic efforts of Alice Kadzanja, an HIV-positive nurse in Malawi; or talking to Nelson Mandela and his wife about coming to terms with his own son’s death from AIDS.”

These stories also show us something very important: Africa isn’t populated by people who aren’t smart and don’t know how to take care of themselves, but rather is filled with people who manage to survive despite this terrible pandemic. They clearly show that if industrialized countries and, most importantly, those living in industrialized countries put aside politics and personal opinions and put their whole-hearted supported behind this amazing continent, it will not only survive; it will conquer and thrive.

I can’t possibly offer a better review than those that have already been done, so I am taking the liberty to poach my favorite ones:

“A book of quiet yet overwhelming power, delivering a message of devastating moral authority. Moving, heartrending and uplifting, Stephanie Nolen’s book bears impeccable witness to the ‘unique and savage’ phenomenon of AIDS in Africa.” – William Boyd, author of Restless and Brazzaville Beach

“This book is both brilliant and enraging, and contains accounts of some extraordinary people doing courageous things to fight the epidemic which go a long way to counter other stories of hopelessness, ignorance and corrupt or inept government … It is a call to arms to a battle we should all have been fighting for a very long time.” – The Observer (London)

“She is an evocative and empathetic writer, and her journalism doesn’t succumb to the affliction of so much other writing about Africa, the tendency to reduce people to categories that fit the reader’s, and the author’s, preconceptions…” – The Nation (New York)

“In 28, Nolen marshals the reporting and storytelling skills that have made her, after UN special envoy Stephen Lewis, this country’s most compelling and vigorous voice for action on the grim parasite worming its way across Africa. In clear, insightful prose and vivid, though never lurid, detail, she allows her characters—one for every million people—to tell tales of despair and remarkable courage, willful ignorance and improbable triumph.” – The Gazette (Montreal)

“Never sentimental, Nolen lets the people and their experiences speak for themselves. The result is both an informative and a powerful read , which will help Western readers connect personally with a crisis that too often seems remote. . . . A unique, valuable contribution to the literature on this important topic.” – Library Journal

“Nolen shows that the struggle of one to live with dignity must be the struggle of all. Read. Weep. Rage. And above all else – like those people described in this brilliant book – find the courage to do.” – Dr James Orbinski, Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières

The book’s website is definitely worth a visit; it features amazing pictures and videos that make the stories come to life. However, I think that the best part of the site is it’s Take Action. Read the book and be inspired to do something.

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the prettiest of them all?

I finally figured out what was bothering me about the whole concept behind America’s Next Top Model. Tyra Banks says that she wants to promote different types of beauty. While she is doing that in one way, in that there are contestants from various backgrounds as well as winners from different backgrounds, she is also contributing to promoting a certain ‘fake beauty’, too.

The one thing in common with every one of these girls: they have to be perfected in ways that only a model on a photo shoot can be. The show is good in that it shows how girls looking amazing and perfect in pictures look in real life – but it also indirectly promotes the fact that you can look that good and just maybe you should look that good.

So my question is: how do you promote real beauty?

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is one way that I find amazing. The Campaign uses normal, every day women, each beautiful in their own way but none perfect and air brushed etc. like real models usually are. When I first looked the Campaign up, I was so inspired that I immediately switched to Dove products (thank goodness they have good products!).

It’s been awhile since that day (two bottles of lotion, to be exact) and I decided to look it up the other day to check how well the Campaign must be doing.

What I found confirmed what I have long believed: women are way too hard on themselves. Apparently, “ads featuring thin models make women feel worse about themselves but better about the brands”. Isn’t that crazy? Women see these pictures, knowing they are quite fake, then turn around, work really hard to pay the extra money to get a brand name because it’s going to make them feel better. Talk about being in denial .

What about the returns of this Campaign to Dove? “The findings create something of a quandary for marketers, who might have a positive effect on young women’s self-esteem by showing more typical women in ads, but suffer in the marketplace as a result. ‘I’d tend to be cautious about using models in advertising that wouldn’t maximise the attitudes and evaluations of the advertising and the brands,’ said Kees in support of the rational. ‘Certainly [Dove] got a lot of publicity, and it’s a great, innovative campaign. But in terms of the bottom line of how that might be impacting … purchase behaviour, I’m not sure.’”. In the face of such data, you really have to hand it to Dove to stick to their campaign, which has run for five years now.

So what can we do? Because the question isn’t if we have the power to change it; after all: “the succes of a global brand in a local market hinges largely on the brand’s ability to adapt to local needs and tastes”. In other words, what the consumer asks for, the consumer gets. The only problem is that the consumer doesn’t always know how to express what he or she wants, and does easily give into the powerful, all-surrounding and all-encompassing aggressive marketing campaigns that rage all around us. We’re trying to fulfill an innate desire for something, and we figure that if these brands made it so big, then what they are advertising for must be the answer to that nebulous thing inside us telling us to reach for something big that we can’t quite define. The world of marketing has figured out how to use that nebulous thing inside us, sometimes very deviously. We need to learn how to use it, too.

While you figure it out, do give Dove a hand by using their products. And, before anyone asks, no, I am not being sponsored by Dove.

Yet .

Some graduate humour…

The Top Ten Lies Told by Graduate Students (according to the Harvard Crimson)

10 – It doesn’t bother me at all that my college roommate is making $80,000 a year on Wall Street.
9 – I’d be delighted to proofread your book/chapter/article.
8 – My work has a lot of practical importance.
7 – I would never date an undergraduate.
6 – Your latest article was so inspiring.
5 – I turned down a lot of great job offers to come here.
4 – I just have one more book to read and then I’ll start writing.
3 – The department is giving me so much support.
2 – My job prospects look really good.
1 – No really, I’ll be out of here in only two more years

_____________

Top Five Lies Told by Teaching Assistants:

5 – I’m not going to grant any extensions.
4 – Call me any time. I’m always available.
3 – It doesn’t matter what I think; write what you believe.
2 – Think of the midterm as a diagnostic tool.
1 – My other section is much better prepared than you guys

_____________

The truth about grad students, post-docs, and professors

A grad student, a post-doc, and a professor are walking through a city park and they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out in a puff of smoke.
The Genie says, “I usually only grant three wishes, so I’ll give each of you just one.”
“Me first! Me first!” says the grad student. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat with a gorgeous woman who sunbathes topless.” Poof! He’s gone.
“Me next! Me next!” says the post-doc. “I want to be in Hawaii, relaxing on the beach with a professional hula dancer on one side and a Mai Tai on the other.” Poof! He’s gone.
“You’re next,” the Genie says to the professor.
The professor says, “I want those guys back in the lab after lunch.”

________________

Dissertation Humour

One sunny day, a rabbit came out of her hole in the ground to enjoy the fine weather. The day was so nice that she became careless and a fox snuck up behind her and caught her.
“I am going to eat you for lunch!” said the fox. “Wait!” replied the rabbit,” You should at least wait a few days.”
“Oh yeah? Why should I wait?”
“Well, I am just finishing my dissertation on ‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.’”
“Are you crazy? I should eat you right now! Everyone knows that a fox will always win over a rabbit.”
“Not according to my research. If you like, you can come into my hole and read it for yourself. If you are not convinced, you can go ahead and eat me for lunch.”
“You really are crazy!” said the fox, but since the fox was curious and had nothing to lose, it went into the hole with the rabbit.
The fox never came out.
A few days later, the rabbit was again taking a break from writing when a wolf came out of the bushes and was ready to set upon her.
“Wait!” yelled the rabbit,” You can’t eat me right now.”
“And why might that be, my furry appetizer?” said the wolf.
“I am almost finished with my dissertation on ‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.’”
The wolf laughed so hard he almost let go of the rabbit. “Maybe I shouldn’t eat you–you really are sick in the head! You might have something contagious.”
“Come and read it for yourself, you can eat me afterwards if you disagree with my conclusions.”
So the wolf went down into the rabbit’s hole…and never came out.
The rabbit finished her dissertation and was out celebrating in the local lettuce patch.
Another rabbit came along and asked, “What’s up? You seem very happy.”
“Yup, I just finished my dissertation.”
“Congratulations! What’s it about?”
“‘The Superiority of Rabbits over Foxes and Wolves.’”
“No way! That can’t be right.”
“Oh, but it is. Come and read it for yourself.”
So the two rabbits went down into the rabbit hole. As they entered, the friend saw the typical graduate abode. A computer with the controversial work was in one corner surrounded by discarded papers. And on one side of the room there was a pile of fox bones, while on the other side there was a pile of wolf bones. And in the center, there was a large, well-fed lion.

The moral of the story:

The title of your dissertation doesn’t matter. The subject doesn’t matter. The research doesn’t matter. All that matters is who your advisor is.

______________

Top ten reasons why God never received tenure:

10 – He never got a Ph.D.
9 – He had only one major publication.
8 – It wasn’t published in a refereed journal.
7 – Some doubt that he wrote it Himself.
6 – Sure, he created the world, but what has he done since?
5 – The scientific community can’t replicate his results.
4 – He rarely came to class and just tells students, “Read the book.”
3 – His office hours are irregular and sometimes held on a mountaintop.
2 – He doesn’t present at conferences.
1 – He spent too much time teaching and not enough time doing research.

Top ten reasons why He doesn’t care about not having tenure:

10 – He’s the boss.
9 – His only publication is still the most influential in the field, with millions of citations a year.
8 – Sure He didn’t write it Himself, but with 12 grad students, would you?
7 – Everybody says “Amen” to His opinions.
6 – Disagree with Him, and you may end up in hell.
5 – He’s well known for being a hard worker: six days a week nonstop; rests only on the 7th.
4 – Nobody can beat His 4.5 billion years of field work and 3.5 billion years of DNA expertise.
3 – Most agree He was the first one to be awarded a Nobel prize. Nobel himself.
2 – His research facilities are simply the best: Even well funded scientists will admit they work in conditions which are “far from Heaven” when asked.
1 – He doesn’t depend on NSF money.

The end of a beautiful fairy tale

I thought that ranting at banks and financial institutions and complaining about how they were bleeding us was only a therapeutic approach to the constraints and stress of budgeting. I kind of was hoping that they weren’t out there only to ‘get’ us, poor little consumer, but to make a profit while helping us. I know, I know, sounds pretty naïve, but I like flowers and butterflies too.

Seem like I was sorely mistaken.

Check out the headline gracing CBC’s news website: ‘FBI investigates 4 companies at heart of financial meltdown’

…

…

What? Are you telling me that I was actually wrong? Oh, the knife that just lunged in my stomach is so painful.

The CBC goes on, relishing in twisting that dratted knife: “The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, the Associated Press has learned.

Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also is under investigation.

The inquiries will focus on the financial institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law enforcement official said.”

Wow. Now I don’t know much about finances and banks and all that stuff, but I figure it must be easier to take money from poor people when they are only numbers on your screen, because I don’t know how anyone could just take money from a single mother struggling to raise her two kids. Then again… Maybe I should trade those flowers and butterflies in after all.

So when are they going to investigate the oil companies? There has got to be something wrong going on when Petro-Canada is making so much profit and yet gas prices are still so high.

Conspiracy? I think so. No wonder they got rid of Fox Mulder .

Rachel getting married (and some other people too, but let’s focus on Rachel)

When you find an artist who is good looking, you tend to be a little biased towards his or her art. It’s always nice to find someone you find absolutely amazingly good looking, inspiring, eloquent AND, to top it off, that person actually produces great art.

I have a couple such artists, and the one I am going to talk a little about is Anne Hathaway. In my humble opinion, she’s absolutely marvellous. She’s beautiful and talented and her taste in choosing movie roles that have propelled her into stardom has been brilliant. And it seems like her latest choice might be the one to send her into superstardom.

I’m very excited about this latest movie, Rachel getting married, which premiered at the Toronto Film festival on September 6^th 2008 to rave reviews. It’s going to have a limited release in select theatres in the US on October 3^rd, and I hope that means that some copies will filter up into Canadian theatres, too.

Those of you expecting to see Anne Hathaway in her usual beautiful, fashionable self like in Devil wears Prada and Princess Diaries are in for a little shock. In Rachel getting Married, Anne Hathaway is portraying a recovering drug addict, Kym, out for her sister Rachel’s wedding, which sticks her right back in the middle of family problems.

Andrea Baillie, tell us that “the film is at times difficult to watch as Kym, teeming with anger and guilt, chain-smokes and fidgets her way through the wedding weekend, obsessed by rivalries and perceived slights and haunted by a family tragedy. The character is decidedly unlikable and selfish, and yet Hathaway also manages to elicit exquisite moments of sympathy for Kym as well.”

Andrea Baillie continues on: “During one excruciating scene in the film, Kym stands to make a toast to her sister, choosing the moment to discuss her recovery program and attempt to make amends for her past behaviour. Hathaway, dressed in teetering black heels, skinny jeans and a purple top, calls the scene the “most fun she’s maybe ever had” in her career.”

Ramin Setoodeh, who very recently (as in, on the 20^th) interviewed Anne Hathaway, tells us that it’s “a hard-edged, powerful performance that’s earning Hathaway Oscar buzz for the first time in her career”.

However Andrea Baillie tells us that “Hathaway, meanwhile, has shunned Oscar talk, saying only that playing Kym has had a profound impact on her. ‘This character has changed my life in a way,’ she says. ‘We all have warts … so often we feel compelled to pretend like we don’t … I think we can give each other more credit to be ourselves, and to be more accepting of each other.’”

I had heard about Anne Hathaway’s potential for an Oscar, and how she would have to break out of her mould as being the stereotypical Disney Princess, ugly duckling becomes beautiful girl. She does portray those well, but her potential seems to shine through those seemingly easy roles and I’m hoping that Rachel getting married truly is a reflection of her full potential.

I’ll let you know once I see the movie!

Until then, here is the preview of the movie. Enjoy!

Inbox spring cleaning (I’m still in denial)

I’ve been emptying out my inbox and have been stumbling on some hilarious forwards. It seemed like a shame to delete them without one last nod – which is why I have decided to post the best ones on my Blog. It also helps when I have writer’s block.

Enjoy!

You know you are turning Canadian when…

You understand the phrase “Could you pass me a serviette, I just dropped my poutine, on the chesterfield. (This is embarrassing, but… What is a Chesterfield?)
You eat chocolate bars, not candy bars.
You drink Pop, not Soda. (We call them soft drinks here in Mtl, because that’s all there is. Drinks and soft drinks.)
You know that a pike is a type of fish, not part of a highway.
You drive on a highway, not a freeway.
You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
You know that Casey and Finnegan were not part of a Celtic musical group.
You get excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada.
You brag to Americans that: Shania Twain, Jim Carrey, Celine Dion, Michael J. Fox, John Candy, William Shatner, Tom Green, Matthew Perry, Mike Myers, Neve Campbell, Pamela Anderson Lee & many more are
Canadians.
You design your Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
You know that the last letter of the English alphabet is always pronounced “Zed”.
Your local newspaper covers national news on 2 pages, but requires 6 pages for hockey. (Only 6? The writer of this list is definitely not from Montreal!)
You know that the four seasons mean: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road work.
You know that when it’s 25 degrees outside, it’s a warm day.
You understand the Labatt Blue commercials.
You know how to pronounce and spell “Saskatchewan”.
You perk up when you hear the theme song from ‘Hockey Night in Canada’. (Which one? The old or the new one?)
You are in grade 12, not the 12th grade.
“Eh?” is a very important part of your vocabulary, and is more polite than, “Huh?”
You say “aboot” instead of “about”.
Your Beer Case handles Are Big Enough To Fit Your Mitts.
You froze your tongue to something metal and survived to tell about it.
You know that we don’t all live in igloos and ride polar bears to work.

Modern Day Fairy Tales

I’m fairly certain that many of you have already read this one before, but it’s worth reading again.

Enjoy!

________________________________

Fairy Tale Number 1

Once upon a time, a guy asked a girl, “Will you marry me?” The girl said “No,” and she lived happily ever after and went shopping, went out with friends, always had a clean house, only had to cook what she wanted when she wanted, had a closet full of shoes and handbags, stayed skinny and was never farted or burped on.

The End.

_______________________________

Fairy Tale Number 2

Once upon a time, in a land far away, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog as she sat contemplating ecological issues on the shores of an unpolluted pond in a verdant meadow near her castle. The frog hopped onto the princess’ lap.

“Elegant lady, I was once a handsome prince until an evil witch cast a spell upon me. One kiss from you however will turn me back into the dapper young prince that I am. And then, my sweet, we can marry and set up housekeeping in your castle with my mother, where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children and forever feel grateful and happy doing so.”

That night, as the princess dined sumptuously on lightly sautéed frog legs seasoned in a white wine and onion cream sauce, she  chuckled to herself.

“I really don’t think so.”

The End.

Google’s Project 10^100

To all the wonderful people teeming with amazing ideas to make the world a better place, here is the opportunity of a lifetime! Google, who brought us what is the love of my life, i.e. it’s amazing search engine, has launched Project 10^100. The project’s tag line: ‘May those who help the most win’. Be still my heart.

For those of you who are interested, you can check out the Project’s official website. There isn’t much time left though: the deadline for submissions is October 20th.

Do let me know if you submit something! And now I am off to cogitate a little on the possibilities of convincing Google that pimping my ride is going to help make the world a better place…

Dear God…

Everyone has conversations with God, some serious and some hilarious. I thought I’d share some of the funnier ones. Please do share your hilarious conversations/letters with God! We all need a good laugh

September 24th 2008

Dear God;

I have been waking up lately to some very cold weather. I wanted to know if You had, by any chance, left the air conditioning on? If so, it would be really great if You could turn it off, because it’s getting a little too cold here. Also, air conditioning contributes to global warming (ironic, I know).

Thank You for the amazing world You have given us, and sorry for messing it up so bad

Sahar

PS: For cute letters to God from children, visit http://www.dribbleglass.com/jokes/letterstogod.htm. Enjoy!