I am not usually one to write on politics, but this headline, “Scandal sidelines ‘high-maintenance’ Liberal MP’” isn’t so much about politics either.

Ruby Dhalla is the first female Sikh MP in Canada, a high profile member of the Liberal Party, and the critic for youth and multiculturalism. At least the article mentions that.

There have been other women and other Sikhs in parliament, just never one who might describe herself in an online personal as “SSF,” because guess what? She’s not married either. Amazingly, the article doesn’t mention Ms Dhalla’s age. Amazing because pretty much every other aspect of her personality, looks, and behavior is put under the microscope.

(more inside…)

I’m back Shameless! Had to finish some serious schoolwork, but I am now getting slowly back in gear. However, because that was a long semester full of big words, and big deadlines, I’ll probably just post the occasional funny until my grey matter has had time to rest up a bit.

Let’s start with this awesome video of Portia De Rossi apologizing for her big gay wedding.

That’s right Portia, it’s people like you who force haters to wear silly hats.

I hate Valentine’s Day, but I *LOVE* unicorns, so any relation between this post and that ridiculous excuse for wearing pink underwear and eating chocolate-fondue from your sweetheart’s hand is entirely accidental.

Anyways, in a spirit of cheesy love, totally un-related to V-Day, check out: Cornify: Unicorns & Rainbows On Demand.

What does it do? Well my dear readers, take a look at Shameless post-cornification:

So many Unicorns… (Cornify + Miriam Verburg)

I know, kinda brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it? The only thing you can’t do is move the stickers once they are on your site, which is annoying because I really wanted to be able to put the unicorns in a nice little herd. Oh well.

Check out this illustrated comparison from traditional women’s magazine Woman’s Day charting the increase in women’s incomes over the last 50 years.

In the 1950s, the average woman earned 14k a year, had a 983 square foot house and craftsman or labourer spouse. Now, the average is 29k, with a post-high school education and a 2349 square foot house. 15k is not actually a huge improvement.

Photo-collage produced by Women’s Day magazine. (Staff (WD))

All these numbers are adjusted for inflation, so in 1950 eggs did not actually cost $5, but by today’s standards that’s what we would be paying for them. It’s a bit confusing, but the idea is that while median incomes appear to have gone up, the cost of goods, services and a bunch of other stuff has gone way down. Welcome to the free market, my friends.

(more inside…)

So, this week has seen a flurry of activity centered on one angry father’s desire to keep The Handmaid’s Tale off his son’s high school reading list. Robert Edwards has a problem with Atwood’s novel because he feels that the book depicts scenarios and uses language that is not appropriate in a high school environment.

While trying to get some sense of the novel’s impact on young people, I did a search on YouTube and discovered a pile of school projects devoted to The Handmaid’s Tale. Young people’s own creative exploration of Atwood’s themes do more to explain why the book belongs in school than anything I can say, so I’ll augment this post with media projects from around the globe. They’re interesting, weird, and one in particular is kind of hilarious. All take The Handmaid’s Tale and translate it from Can-Con literary classic to 5-7 minute YouTube specials.

This one is by Alwaysnothin and was posted in Feb 2008. It’s a succinct 3 minute synopsis that makes use of The Bloodhound Gang and Queen among myriad other musical references:

(more inside…)

Korean Photographer JeongMee Yoon has been taking beautifully arranged pictures of girls and their belongings and boys and their belongings as part of the Pink & Blue Project. So many pictures, and wow! So many belongings.

Pink & Blue Project (JeongMee Yoon)

Crazy eh? You can barely see the child for their toys. The pink/blue split is also kind of remarkable.

I remember lining up all my teddy bears for a group shot when I was about 9 and I don’t think they were so uniformly pink. Then again, I was a tomboy and I think I hated the color because I thought it was sissy. At the time I wanted rainbows painted on everything, in hindsight that was a clue to so many things, from queerness to my inability to choose just one thing and stick with it (as my grandmother says). Okay I also gave all my dolls boys’ names, so forget me, I am not a good sample. What about you? Was pink the big colour for you growing up?

Attend via FaceBook.

As Jayme Poisson tells us in “Mothers of Invention” (Shameless, Fall 2008), Countess Ada (Née Byron) Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers. In fact, her programs, written for friend Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, pre-date the existence of the machine itself, since Babbage died before it reached completion. Both a bleeding edge technician, and the purveyor of Romantic-Era vaporware, Lovelace was a pioneering expert in the novel field of computation in the early parts of the 19th century.

This week Suw Charman-Anderson, angered by yet another set of fairly juvenile activities centred around women, geekiness and objectification, made a pledge that she would write about a woman in technology she admired on March 24th. That date strikes me as being like, the distant future, but assuming I remember, I will certainly come up with someone I can profile from the canon of my personal acquaintances.

(more inside…)

In ‘Enough, Already’ Globe and Mail columnist Judith Timson discusses the cover of January’s O magazine, where a now “fat” Oprah stands before the freakishly slim Oprah of yester-month(?). I don’t know how quickly Oprah’s diet yo-yo is currently going but seasonal weight changes seem to be the norm for anyone with a media empire.

Timson makes the point that if weight obsession makes the cover of O in a month where economic downturns, the first African-American president in history and senate scandals are but a few of the big issues, maybe Oprah’s “body problem” isn’t that important?

(more inside…)

Bush Ducks Shoes Thrown in Iraqi Leader’s Office

President George W. Bush ducked two shoes thrown at him by an unidentified man during a press conference in the Iraqi prime minister’s office to mark the signing of a security agreement.

Bush wasn’t hit by the shoes, which both sailed over his head after they were thrown one after the other. The president shrugged and said “I’m OK” after the incident in Baghdad today. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” Bush said afterwards.

In Arab culture, throwing shoes is a grave show of disrespect. The man shouted an Arabic phrase, which an Iraqi present translated as “This is a farewell kiss, dog.”

Luckily for Bush, a size 10 men’s shoe, while heavier, actually hurts less then a stiletto heel thrown with accuracy. He could have lost an eye, you know.