I came across this sign on a furniture shop in Toronto Saturday night on my way home from work. The shop is normally open from 12-5 on Sundays. And obviously with the 50k cross-country ski on Sunday, there’s no doubt that’s why they’re closing down.
OK, OK it’s for the hockey game: a rematch of last Sunday’s debacle and a rematch of the 2002 Olympic final.
No doubt, EVERYONE will be tuned into Canada vs the USA. It’s almost too tough to figure out who could win.
Last Sunday, it was Martin Brodeur that really screwed up the Canadian team. Add to that, Canada wasn’t yet playing to their full potential, they didn’t really have that team vibe to them. So now that they have their goalie (Roberto Luongo) and their team in synch, they could come out on top. And the way we killed the Russians could work to our advantage and give us the push we need to follow through.
Then there’s Team USA — the team no one expected to do anything (I think it’s only been GM Brian Burke saying that they were not only playing for fourth, but according to everyone else they were playing for fourth place). They’ve made it this far, which is far beyond anyone’s expectations (reportedly, half the American team had their flights booked home for this morning, so even THEY didn’t they’d make it this far).
So will it be a Party in the USA Sunday evening, or will Canadians be partying in the street?
I think it’s just too close to call. And while I want the Canadians to win quite bad, I have a feeling it’s going to be way too hard for the Canadians to beat American Ryan Miller.
It seems while people will tweet about anything, there are still things that people think are untweetable.
Easy examples come up: Shellie Ross, the Florida woman who tweeted about her 2-year-old son falling into the backyard pool just 30 minutes after calling 911; and Penelope Trunk, who tweeted she was having a miscarriage while sitting in a boardroom meeting.
Well add another name to that list of (seemingly only) women who go too far on Twitter: Angie Jackson.
The 27-year-old not only tweeted, but blogged and did a video about her experience taking RU-486 (commonly known as the abortion pill which is not available in Canada).
She says she found out she was pregnant earlier this month and decided that abortion would be the best decision for her due to medical issues and because she already has one son, who is a special needs child. She took the pill, set up the video camera and recorded her thoughts and reasoning for her decision.
“I’m live-tweeting my abortion on Twitter,” she says in her video. “Not for some publicity stunt or attention or to justify this to myself … I’m doing this to demystify abortion. I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad.”
And she did just as she promised, tweeting her way through the cramps on Feb. 21.
But things did not turn out the way Jackson had intended. She told ABC News she received death threats for her decision to take the (legal) pill and abort her unborn child.
“Maybe I was naive. I had not expected that people would think I was making up a medical need for an abortion or other things, like people accusing me of getting pregnant on purpose so I could do this as a publicity stunt,” she told ABC.
The real question here isn’t if Jackson was right to have an abortion because abortion is still legal in the United States, and should be every woman’s choice. It boils down to whether she went too far by decided to live-tweet the experience and blog about it.
Jackson reportedly had over 800 followers before doing this, as of Saturday night, she had over 2,000 so I don’t think this affected her negatively in any way. Her decision to air her private life in public was hers to make. Her followers and readers who did not agree with her decision had a choice: to unfollow her or to stop reading her.
For her to receive threats and negative comments is just uncalled for. That being said, there’s no doubt Jackson should have expected the negative reaction because abortion is such a hot-button issue, especially in the United States. If she was doing this to help other women who may want to have an abortion, but are too scared, no doubt reading someone else’s experience will help them a great deal.
And Jackson just took a pill. The outrage might be more apt if she was live tweeting as she actually had the procedure done (as many mothers are now live tweeting as they go through labour).
The biggest thing to take away from this is that everyone’s use of social media, and the internet in general, is different. We shouldn’t be so quick to judge someone else. No doubt one day someone Googling for information on abortion will come across Jackson’s story and it may help her make one of the toughest decisions of her life.
Do you think Jackson crossed the line? If so, was it enough to receive death threats?
Last weekend, when I was home in Kincardine for a few days I learned something bizarre.
A local bar has decided to ban kids under the age of 23 from entering their bar on Friday and Saturday night. Not a big deal to some, but my brother is under that age: He’ll be 22 in a few months. Which means while I was home, he was unable to join me for a catch up drink on Friday night.
The reason for the ban depends who you ask. Talk of the town is the local junior hockey team has been causing a ruckus when they come out drinking on the weekend, and most of those kids are under 23. Others say it’s that a different crowd (namely the young one) is coming to the bar now that other bars that used to cater to them have shut down.
It doesn’t matter, I think it’s a form of discrimination.
In this article in the Kincardine Independent, Hawg’s Breath owner Laura Doerr said she is free to ban who she wants in order to keep things at the bar under control. And I have no doubt that’s true, but it seems ridiculous to me that a kid like my brother, who sits quietly and engages in conversation when he goes out to drink is no longer allowed in a bar he has patroned since he was a legal drinker.
“It’s not something we entered into lightly,” Doerr told the Independent. “It’s tough because we want the business, and it isn’t smart to be turning people away. But we’ve worked hard and we want to provide a safe atmosphere for our clientele and our staff.”
She told the Independent that she is allowed to turn people away, just as clubs in Toronto have age restrictions.
I live in Toronto, but am not a club-goer. While there is no doubt that clubs have certain age restrictions, I don’t think it’s the same as a 60-capacity small-town pub, which has built a reputation on being a place where you can go and have a conversation with someone.
On top of that, clubs in Toronto with age restrictions? They typically have bouncers, Hawg’s Breath does not. Instead, it’s up to their servers to kick people out who don’t meet the required age. As a former server, I know I wouldn’t want to tell people they had to get out.
And, according to my brother, there’s no real consensus amongst the staff on the policy. Before he was aware of it, he was told he had to get out because of being under 23 by one server, while the other two said he should be allowed to stay. how is that helping anyone?
I’m sorry to hear that some young 20-somethings are ruining it for everyone else in Kincardine, but as far as I am concerned if you are of legal age to drink, and are not causing a problem, you should not be banned simply because other people your age are not doing the same.
Normally where I live, right about now we’ve had enough of winter.
Enough of shovelling, enough of plowing, enough of the cold. ENOUGH!!
This year has been anything but a normal winter. It may have been the first year no one really batted an eye come Groundhog Day earlier this month because we really didn’t care about six more weeks of winter or an early spring. At that point we were still waiting for winter to arrive.
Then Monday hit.
A mere 10 cm was forecast in the Toronto area, which was enough for Toronto media to get their storm centre coverage going. It was, as far as Torontonians were concerned, the day we had all been dreading — right up there with the Apocalypse.
Hundreds of car accidents were reported, wait times for a tow truck climbed to at least 45 minutes.
I work an hour north of the city where they have had snow pretty much since November. I had the pleasure of driving home this evening. I took the back roads to stay off the big highways where all the Toronto drivers would be “driving.”
Google Maps told me it would take about an hour and a half, but that was closer to two and a half hours. And yes, it sucked: Snow covered roads, black ice, little visibility. But I took my time and got through it.
By the time I got to Toronto the roads were clear. Slushy, but clear. Driving through the city was the easiest part of my commute.
I guess that’s the downside to this unusually warm winter we’ve had: There really hasn’t been much winter in order for drivers to get used to driving in winter. Which means every little snowfall is enough for accidents galore.
But seriously here folks, we’re Canadian. We should be used to winter driving because we do it every year! This is nothing new! It’s time people learned to slow down, take their time and stop stressing! And if you can’t do that, stay off the road.
Did woman tweeting about her abortion cross the line?
It seems while people will tweet about anything, there are still things that people think are untweetable.
Easy examples come up: Shellie Ross, the Florida woman who tweeted about her 2-year-old son falling into the backyard pool just 30 minutes after calling 911; and Penelope Trunk, who tweeted she was having a miscarriage while sitting in a boardroom meeting.
Well add another name to that list of (seemingly only) women who go too far on Twitter: Angie Jackson.
The 27-year-old not only tweeted, but blogged and did a video about her experience taking RU-486 (commonly known as the abortion pill which is not available in Canada).
She says she found out she was pregnant earlier this month and decided that abortion would be the best decision for her due to medical issues and because she already has one son, who is a special needs child. She took the pill, set up the video camera and recorded her thoughts and reasoning for her decision.
“I’m live-tweeting my abortion on Twitter,” she says in her video. “Not for some publicity stunt or attention or to justify this to myself … I’m doing this to demystify abortion. I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad.”
And she did just as she promised, tweeting her way through the cramps on Feb. 21.
But things did not turn out the way Jackson had intended. She told ABC News she received death threats for her decision to take the (legal) pill and abort her unborn child.
“Maybe I was naive. I had not expected that people would think I was making up a medical need for an abortion or other things, like people accusing me of getting pregnant on purpose so I could do this as a publicity stunt,” she told ABC.
The real question here isn’t if Jackson was right to have an abortion because abortion is still legal in the United States, and should be every woman’s choice. It boils down to whether she went too far by decided to live-tweet the experience and blog about it.
Jackson reportedly had over 800 followers before doing this, as of Saturday night, she had over 2,000 so I don’t think this affected her negatively in any way. Her decision to air her private life in public was hers to make. Her followers and readers who did not agree with her decision had a choice: to unfollow her or to stop reading her.
For her to receive threats and negative comments is just uncalled for. That being said, there’s no doubt Jackson should have expected the negative reaction because abortion is such a hot-button issue, especially in the United States. If she was doing this to help other women who may want to have an abortion, but are too scared, no doubt reading someone else’s experience will help them a great deal.
And Jackson just took a pill. The outrage might be more apt if she was live tweeting as she actually had the procedure done (as many mothers are now live tweeting as they go through labour).
The biggest thing to take away from this is that everyone’s use of social media, and the internet in general, is different. We shouldn’t be so quick to judge someone else. No doubt one day someone Googling for information on abortion will come across Jackson’s story and it may help her make one of the toughest decisions of her life.
Do you think Jackson crossed the line? If so, was it enough to receive death threats?