Happy Canada Day 1

Clearly the Flagston's are unaware that Ridgeville is in Canada and they aren't shooting off their fireworks to celebrate Independence Day but are celebrating Canada Day instead. Maybe Hi and Lois themselves are aware of it but are keeping the land of socialized medicine, cheap prescription drugs, gun control, and a drinking age of 19 (which is also when you can get into the strip bars if you live anywhere but Saskatchewan). They don't need to know that such evil exists!

Happy Canada Day to all of us lucky people who live in the land of socialized medicine, cheap prescription drugs, gun control, and a drinking age of 19.

Spy Coins!

Here's a tip for the guy who takes over NCIS from David P. Bellisario next season. The 2004 Canadian Poppy quarter is not an espionage device.

This story has been popping up all over (sort of like poppies I guess). Tim Gueguen had it in his blog Monday (but after I read it yesterday) and it was in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix today. And if it was in the Star-Phoenix today it must have been out in the rest of the media sometime last week – the Star-Phoenix isn't exactly the quickest paper to jump on a story.

So here's the scoop as they used to say in the newspaper business (but rarely around the Star-Phoenix offices – the usual phrase there is "here's the wire copy and the latest slams against the NDP"). In 2004 Canada issued a 25^₵ coin (technically we don't have "quarters" in Canada; that word's not on the money unlike the United States) commemorating veterans. The design was unique in that it had what amounts to a decal on it depicting a red poppy. The decal is covered with a coating that is supposed to prevent the colour in the centre of the coin from wearing off due to handling (with varying degrees of success – mine was quite faded when I got it). In Canada and many Commonwealth countries, including the United Kingdom, the red poppy is the symbol of remembrance for the casualties of wars – plastic poppies are sold to raise funds for veterans' organizations and worn in the week leading up to November 11^th. The Royal Canadian Mint issued 30 million of the coins, primarily through the Tim Horton's donut chain.

In 2005 and 2006 US defense contractors working in Canada submitted reports to the Defense Security Service, an agency of the US Department of Defense. According to the reports the coins were "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology." One contractor discovered one of the coins in the cup holder of his rental car. He gave it a thorough examination: "It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source. Under high-power microscope it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top." One contractor believed someone was planting the coins on him when he found two in the outer pockets of his coat: "Coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket." The contractor reports led to the DSS issuing a security warning that "mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on US contractors on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through Canada." The warning suggested that the coins could be used to track the movements of people carrying them. However, at no time did the Defense Security Service actually examine any of the coins.

Needless to say this caused concerns with officials of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Luc Portelance, now Deputy Director of CSIS wrote to a subordinate in January of this year, "That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence contractors will not go away. Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the story on this?" Other CSIS officials were also seeking answers: "We would be very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the comment related to using Canadian coins in this manner. If it is accurate are they talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?"

No one seems to have an explanation of how the coins could be effectively used to track someone, given that they could be disposed of through the simple method of spending them on a gumball.

I Know I Make Typos -

But I hope that none are as egregious as this one in the dead trees version of the local rag, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. In a story about the New Orleans Saints defeat of the Philadelphia Eagles, the copy was supposed to read (as nearly as I can figure) "With victory secured for the Saints (11-6) on McAllister's powerful kick, team owner Tom Benson did his 'Benson Boogie' on the field." What was on the printed page was, "With victory secured for the Saints (11-6) on McAllister's powerfu ck, team owner Tom Benson did his 'Benson Boogie' on the field."

Knowing the local paper as well as I do, no one will be fired or reprimanded, but people will notice.

A Quiz on Accents

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The West
The Midland
Boston
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Well really it does make sense - I am a Canadian after all. More to the point I'm a western Canadian, so a North Central accent makes sense. Going into the States we most frequently use the port of entry in North Dakota (and I actually have been to Fargo, not to mention Moorehead which is across the Red River). What I normally don't get is the supposed Canadian accent which has us all sounding like counterfeit Scotsmen - oot and aboot indeed.

Something Was Missing On The Election Coverage

It’s nights like this that I miss Dan Rather.

I’m an election junkie. I love ’em, no matter who’s voting for what. Canadian Provincial elections, Federal elections, American elections, British elections; I watch them all. I think it goes back to growing up in Saskatchewan during the Diefenbaker-Pearson period. By the time I was 14 I had been alive for 19 Canadian Federal, Saskatchewan Provincial, American Presidential and mid-term elections, plus I don’t know how many British elections. The only thing that keeps me from following French elections has been the lack of English language commentators and any idea about how the damned things work. And let me tell you that as a connoisseur of such things, this set of elections was a good one. You had drama on the macro-level; can the Democrats win the House of Representatives, and maybe – just maybe – the Senate? The former gives Nancy Pelosi a place in the history books and turning her into a female Glenallen Walken in waiting (West Wing reference). In individual races there’s drama and there’s farce; the woman who lost both her legs to an RPG while flying a helicopter in Iraq who was running in a heavily Republican district in Illinois (she lost), and the married Republican incumbent who was charged with punching his mistress (he lost). Some of this stuff would be great for an episode of a TV series; the question being would the series be The West Wing or Saturday Night Live (back when it was good).

But of course I’m not here to review the election, I’m sort of here to review the TV coverage, which is kind of an absurdity, since there really wasn’t that much TV coverage, at least not that I could review. I get the four networks plus CNN, Headline News, and CNBC. I didn’t look in on Headline News – haven’t watched it since it stopped actually being a network that delivered “headline news” and started putting on people like Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace. As for CNBC, once the election coverage started the Canadian feed turned into CNBC World. I’m not willing to pay the extra bucks for MSNBC or Fox News (yeuch). So I have to spend some time with the broadcast networks, particularly since their regularly scheduled programs hold (slightly) more interest for me than the election.

And that’s how I come to miss Dan Rather. He had entertainment value. 729 days out of every two years he was the very model of the modern journalist – perfectly scripted, perfectly coifed, impeccably dressed. But on that first Tuesday in November on an even numbered years something happened. It was like watching Dr. Jekyll turn into Mr. Hyde. The perfect coif would become slightly less perfect. The Texas accent became more and more pronounced. The impeccably styled jacket might become ever so slightly disheveled or on some occasions might even be removed! But the real joy came when the “perfect anchor” started saying words that could not possibly have been written for him, or at least not by anyone except him. Lines like: "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach." Or another favourite: "If a frog had side pockets, he'd carry a hand gun." I mean that sort of stuff goes beyond politics, it is pure entertainment, and I always got the feeling that Rather lived for Election Day. Sadly, when Dan left CBS he left completely. Worse, he took the amazing Texas aphorism machine along with him. Watching Katie Couric was, well to be honest I’d rather watch Katie, but I’d rather listen to Rather. I mean there was Katie: perfectly coifed, impeccably dressed…and perfectly scripted. But of course it wasn’t just Katie. It was Brian Williams at NBC, and it was Charlie Gibson at ABC. There was no sense that this was anything more than just another story to be reported in a totally professional – and kind of boring – manner. About the only bright light in that way came from CBS veteran Bob Scheiffer but his appearances were fewer than one might have hoped.

So yeah, come Election Day I do miss Dan Rather. He made an appearance on The Daily Show/Colbert Report’s Election Special. While I didn’t see it I understand he was on and off in between 10 and 15 minutes; barely enough time for him to get rolling, and certainly not enough time for him to comment on something like the Virginia Senate race between George Allen and James Webb. For that one, I’d like to think he’d have come up with something as good as "That race is tighter than the rusted lug nuts on a '57 Ford." And you can bet the trailer money on that.

Happy Birthday Philo T. Farnsworth

August 19, 2006 is the 100th birthday of Philo T. Farnsworth.

For those of us who are children of television, and really that's most of us, Farnsworth might rightly be described as our grandfather because Philo T. Farnsworth is generally acknowledged as the father of television. Or at least the father of television as we know it. The British inventor John Logie Baird developed the first practical television device, a mechanical system using a spinning disk to scan the image in the 1920s. In fact the first television transmission in Canada took place in Saskatoon in 1930 using a mechanical system modelled on Baird's. When the BBC began scheduled broadcasts in 1936 they were using both a Baird mechanical system and an electronic system. However mechanical television was a Neanderthal thoroughly outclassed by Cro Magnon, in the form of electronic television, and the heart of electronic television was Philo T. Farnsworth's invention, the Image Dissector.

Philo T. Farnsworth was born in Beaver Utah and grew up in Rigby Idaho. He became fascinated with electronics from the time that he made his first long distance telephone call. At high school he excelled in chemistry and physics, but although he enrolled at Brigham Young University he was forced to leave to help his mother before he completed his degree. Farnsworth had developed the basic idea of the Image Dissector when he was a 14 year old high school student and completed the first operational tube in 1927 when he was 21. The way the Image Dissector worked is described in a Wikipedia article as follows: The image dissector sees the outside world through a glass lens, which focuses an image through the clear glass wall of the tube onto a special plate which is coated with a layer of caesium oxide. When light strikes caesium oxide, the material emits electrons, somewhat like a mirror that reflects an image made of electrons, rather than light (see photoelectric effect). These electrons are aimed and accelerated by electric and magnetic fields onto the dissector's single electron detector so that only a small portion of the electron image hits the detector at any given moment. As time passes the electron image is deflected back and forth and up and down so that the entire image, portion by portion, can be read by the detector. The output from the detector is an electric current whose magnitude is a measure of brightness at a specific point on the image. The Image Dissector was not a perfect device. It had pure light sensitivity. However it was the idea of scanning that was a major breakthrough. The basic television camera tube until the 1960s was the Image Orthicon Tube, which was a combination of Farnsworth's Image Dissector tube with Vladimir Zworykin's Iconoscope tube (which had great light sensitivity).

Philo T. Farnsworth never got rich from developing the Image Dissector even though it was essential in creating the Image Orthicon Tube, largely because he ran into David Sarnoff of RCA and NBC. In 1930 Sarnoff sent Vladimir Zworykin who was working with Westinghouse but would soon be employed by RCA, to spend three days at Farnsworth's lab under false pretenses. Zworykin was so impressed with Farnsworth's work that he integrated it into his own without acknowledging Farnsworth's patents. Farnsworth sought royalty payments from RCA at which point Sarnoff reportedly said "RCA doesn't pay royalties, we collect them." The RCA claim was that Zworykin had patented his Iconoscope in 1923 and this superceded Farnsworth's 1926 patents. However RCA was unable to prove that Zworykin's device produced "an operable television transmitter" and Farnsworth was able to produce evidence - including a drawing he had made for his high school science teacher when he was 15 - that proved that he had the idea first. Farnsworth's claims were upheld in 1934 but Sarnoff (who was really one of the last great robber barons) continued to fight in the courts over specific details for a number of years. Farnsworth would eventually sell his television patents to RCA for $1 million. Most television cameras until at least the 1960s used at least six of Farnsworth's patents.

Unfortunately Farnsworth's later life was plagued by deteriorating health, depression, and financial setbacks although he continued to invent. He served as a Vice President of research at ITT from 1949 until the early 1960s and worked on fusion research both at ITT and at a company he established himself, Philo T. Farnsworth Associates. He died in 1971 of emphysema at age 64, shortly after his company went into bankruptcy due to lack of financing.

What did Philo T. Farnsworth think of his child, Television? His youngest son Kent claimed that his father told him “There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet” but this was apparently not a quote but Kent's summation of his father's feelings on the matter (Zworykin apparently held similar feelings: "I hate what they've done to my child...I would never let my own children watch it."). And his views may have changed a bit after one special event, the moon landing. According to a 1996 interview with Farnsworth's widow Elma (Pem) done by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences "We were watching it, and, when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, Phil turned to me and said, 'Pem, this has made it all worthwhile.' Before then, he wasn't too sure."

Happy July 4th For Those Of You Who Celebrate it

I'm going to celebrate the anniversary of the day that those traitorous scum to the south - sorry, Americans - decided that Good King George wasn't good enough to lead them the way I usually do - by complaining about the CBS coverage of the Boston Pops concert and watching my copy of 1776. The movie is a veritable treasure trove of faces for the discerning TV viewer. Most of the cast came from the original Broadway show and a lot of them did soaps and bits in New York based series during the 1960s. Here are some faces that are a little more familiar.

Here's William Daniels (St. Elsewhere, Knight Rider, Boy Meets World) with Ken Howard (White Shadow, Crossing Jordan) with Howard DaSilva, who did a lot of guest shots after the Black List was lifted



Then there's Major Hochstetter himself Howard Caine (Hogan's Heroes of course).








One of the showiest parts of the film belongs to John Cullum (Northern Exposure and Mark Greene's dad on ER).







Here, dancing with William Daniels, is Blythe Danner most recently of Huff and mother of a girl with the name Gwyneth.







And how could we forget Governor Gene Gatlin from Benson, James Noble.










And this guy? The actor is Daniel Keyes, but more importantly the character is Dr. Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire whose TV descendant and namesake Dr. Josiah "Jed" Bartlet recently left the office of President of the United States on The West Wing.







All kidding aside, to my American friends and readers, have a safe, happy and relaxed Fourth Of July - Independence Day - and be careful with those fireworks.

Happy Canada Say 2006!

What more can I say. Here are the guys responsible for my country existing.
They are First row (from the front, listed left to right): Edward Whalen, Samuel Tilley, George Brown, Charles Tupper
Second row: W.H. Steeves, John Hamilton Gray, Alexander Campbell, Hector Langevin, Oliver Mowat, Thomas D'Arcy McGee
Third row: Charles Fisher, George Coles, J.C. Chapais, Étienne-Paschal Taché, Alexander Galt, J. Cockburn, William McDougall, J. McCully
Fourth row: W.A. Henry, E.B. Chandler, Adams G. Archibald, Georges-Étienne Cartier, Thomas H. Haviland, J.H. Gray, A. Macdonald
Fifth row: Hewitt Bernard, Ambrose Shea, John A. Macdonald, Peter Mitchell, W.H. Pope, J.M. Johnson
Sixth row (back): E. Palmer, F.B.T. Carter, R.B. Dickey

The image of the Quebec City Conference is actually a drawing that was a study for an oil painting that was commissioned in 1883 and is contains attendees from both the Quebec and Charlottetown meetings. The painting, by Robert Harris, was destroyed when the Canadian Houses of Parliament burned in 1916. There have been several modern recreations in colour, including one by Harris himself, commissioned after the fire and which currently hangs in Charlottetown.

Your Site As A Graph

Tim Gueguen turned me on to a site which scans the HTML on your website and turns it into a graphic representation. Here's what I Am A Child Of Television looks like. Unfortunately I can't put the image on the blog but the truth is that part of the beauty of the thing is to watch it unfold. The whole thing reminds me of flowers, Chrysanthemums or perhaps Dandelions (particularly when they're in their seed mode). Fascinating.

A Little Light Entertainment

Thought you might be interested in something I found on Drawn. Illustrator Dylan Meconis has done a series of drawing of the Battlestar Galactica characters done as if they were on The Simpsons. In addition to Admiral Adama and Roslyn there's a complete series including Starbuck, Baltar and Six, and a hilarious one of Dee, Billy and Apollo. Great stuff!

Freaky!

Not really a TV post but just how freaky is it that Tom Cruise's daughter with Katie Holmes, and Brooke Shield's second child with husband Chris Henchy were born on the same day? You will of course recall that Cruise toed the Scientology party line against psychiatry when he critcise her use of the antidepressant Paxil in an interview with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. Shields had bee prescribed Paxil for post-partum depression following the birth of her first daughter Rowan. He also implied that the drugs - which Shields weaned herself off of before becoming pregnant the second time - had put her career in the crapper. Shield's response to Cruise's "concern" for her was an op-ed piece in the New York Times that outlined exactly what she went through.

The new "Tomkitten" is named Suri (which means "princess in Hebrew and "Red Rose" in Farsi). Shield's second child is named Grier Hammond Henchy.

"What Was That Show?" - A TV Detective Tale

From time to time I get comments or emails asking for help in tracking down information on TV shows. It's not exactly my field but I love doing it. It reminds me of the years I spent sneezing in the library stacks while getting my history degree, trying to find the books with the right arguments for the paper I was writing. So this time around I got a comment from Mechie who wanted to know about a particular TV show. Well I'll let Mechie explain:

Help me, Mr Television! Think early 70's Canadian Saturday morning children's programing. Two girls (long hair...one blond and in pigtails named susan and one dark haired kinda snarky one) and two boys. They sang, danced, variety show kinda thing and each week they did a segment on viewer's fathers or mothers and what they did for a living. Sound familiar? I can't find any reference to it. Thanks

The whole thing sounds vaguely familiar but I'm not sure that the show I'm thinking about is the same show Mechie is thinking about. The show I have in mind is Drop-In but it was a weekday show which initially ran three and then four days a week on CBC between 1970 and 1974. That's just the first problem we have with this series being the one that Mechie was thinking of. The usual cast of the show was two guys and two girls - the guys were usually Rex Hagon and Pat Rose while the girls were Susan Conway and either Linda Griffin or Susan Anderson (although I swear I remember Trudy Young being on the show). Hagon and Conway had been part of the original cast of the 1960s series The Forest Rangers. Conway was a dark haired girl Griffin was a blonde, and I'm pretty sure Anderson was as well. The trouble is that a big part of the show description - the singing, dancing, variety part - doesn't fit the show as I remember it.

Now here's where things get tough. Assuming that Mechie is right about it being a Saturday morning show I Googled Canadian children's TV series and didn't get much. There does exist a very good site maintained by the film department at Queens University in Kingston. It is a pretty complete database of CBC shows made between 1952 and 1982. It is searchable but if you don't know what you're looking for it isn't easy. I finally entered "Saturday" as a keyword. This produced 66 results of which most were afternoon or evening shows. I did look at morning and afternoon shows and found Children's Cinema hosted by Bob Homme, "The Friendly Giant", broadcast between 1970 and 1974, which fit the time frame but not the description. There was also something called Peanuts and Popcorn, broadcast between 1975 and 1979. The description of that show doesn't sound promising either: "The CBC moved into children's programming on Saturday mornings with a ninety minute package of films. The program included a cartoon, a serial, and a one hour film. The Canadian component was an animated series called The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo. It told the story of Captain Mark Nemo and his young assistants, Christine and Robbie, in their nuclear powered submarine, the Nautilus. The cartoon was produced by Rainbow Animation Ltd. of Toronto. The whole series was coordinated by Nada Harcourt (1975-77) and Suzanne Garland (1977-78)."

Now here is the really frustrating part. There is no similar database available for CTV or any of the private networks and the very little written material about Canadian TV shows is at best extremely spotty. And of course, if the show were produced by a local station, well the simple fact is that there's virtually no way to get an answer for that. I can remember local shows that aired on the local station here in Saskatoon on Saturdays. In fact I made my TV debut and swan song in an episode of one of them, the Children's Film Committee which was actually a partnership between the TV station and the Public Library's Children's Department to show films made from famous children's books, like Tom Sawyer - they had kids, like me, from the local elementary schools read book reports related to the movie being shown. But by the 1970s most private stations were just picking up packages of cartoons from the American networks or - more often - older material.

As a last resort I checked out one of my old TV Guides from the 1970s - 1972 to be exact. This, I admit was a long shot for several reasons. The only issues I still have are the Fall Preview issues, but stations tended to be on their summer schedules when the Fall Preview issues came out. Does it make a difference - yes. Just as an example CFQC in Saskatoon apparently didn't turn on the transmitter until 10:30 on a summer Saturday morning. Moreover the main part of the Guide - the part showing all the new shows and listing new Saturday kids' shows in the Fall Preview - was still being printed in the United States and would be until 1977. There was a "Canadian Preview" in the listings section but it has limited information. However the evidence from that 1972 TV Guide holds a great deal of information. All of the CTV stations in the "Manitoba-Saskatchewan Edition" were showing American cartoons on Saturday morning, but the "Canadian Preview" lists two Saturday kids shows to debut that year on CTV (but that didn't necessarily mean that every station showed them): The Waterville Gang, "animated underwater adventures for small fry", and Puppet People, "another kiddies show, this one with hand puppets and a couple of different youngsters appearing in each episode." Puppet People may be a possibility - it ran from 1973-1975 and featured ventriloquist Jerry Layne and two puppets created specially for the show. According to Wikipedia "Puppet People combined pre-taped comedy sketches featuring a cast of full size figures. These sketches were played into a game show featuring children answering questions based on the sketches." I don't think it's the show Mechie's looking for, but except for the weekday show Drop-In, which I suppose some stations might have shown on Saturdays, it's the only on that sounds even vaguely close.

If this were an American show I have no doubt that I could have found far more information than this far more easily. The history of Canadian made programming, particularly on the private networks is not consistently or effectively chronicled, either online or in print. As for local programming at any hour, well it exists mainly in anecdotal form. I hope this was of some help, but I don't think it was.

Feel free to keep asking about shows though, I enjoy the detective work!

I Am Not Property - Even Of My Blog

Saw this on Orac's blog so I thought it would be worth taking. I'm not as bad as I could be; in fact I'm downright pedestrian.

18.75 %

My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

Which Crew Do You Fit With

And here I was hoping for DS9...or Serenity.

Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 81% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 69% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 69% Moya (Farscape) 69% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 63% SG-1 (Stargate) 63% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 56% Serenity (Firefly) 50% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 44% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 44% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 38% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 38% You scored as Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica). You are leery of your surroundings, and with good reason. Anyone could be a cylon. But you have close friends and you know they would never hurt you. Now if only the damn XO would stop drinking. Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)

The Mystery Of Mister Six - Solved?

Vote in the poll!

Okay now that I've got that out of the way, let's get down to cases. You may remember the character Mister Six. He was the elderly gent who danced in those Six Flags Amusement Park ads to that song by the Venga Boys. (Okay I admit, I wouldn't know the Venga Boys from a rock - the music I usually listen to tends to be more along the lines of Mozart and Sibelius - but people tell me it's the Venga Boys so I believe them.) The commercial campaign debuted in March 2004 and ended on November 30, 2005 when the new owner of Six Flags, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder decided that the campaign "skewed too young" and stated that the character was "pointless". From the beginning Mr. Six was annoying to many but you had to admit the character was incredible noticeable and people talked about him ... a lot.

The mystery of course was "Who is Mr. Six?" Eliminating Patrick McGoohan - he was Number Six and never addressed by the title "Mister" - we are left with resemblances.





There are those who say that Mr. Six resembles actor and singer Dominic Chianese, aka Uncle Corrado "Junior" Soprano. Of course Uncle June has more hair and fewer liver spots.




Personally I've always thought that he bore a stunning resemblance to legendary Hollywood super-agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar, whose post Oscar parties were legendary events - one went straight from the Oscars to Swifty's parties. Well at least you did before he died. Ruined a great party that did.




However it appears that the secret is now out. On February 1, in his blog , Los Angeles based writer and blogger Paul Davidson revealed that Mr. Six was British choreographer and dancer Danny Teeson, probably best known to many as one of the "gal-pals" on Queer Eye For The Straight Girl. Paul Davidson offered no proof, but today (February 3) Mark Evanier provided what may be the smoking gun in his blog News From Me. It is a 2003 credit list from a firm called Professional Vision Care Associates. On the current version on their website they list a credit for "Mr. Six" for Six Flags but Mark found a Google cached version of the page which clearly has Danny Teeson's name in place of "Mr. Six".

Well that's one mystery apparently solved. Now for the big one. How on Earth can a campaign for an amusement park chain skew too young? You're supposed to want young people in your amusement parks, the same way you want young people watching your TV shows and for the same bloody reason - they spend money. Even the pointless comment is ridiculous; the idea behind "Mr. Six" was that going to Six Flags made you feel young even if you weren't, that the parks were places for everyone to have fun. Of course given so many of Mr. Snyder's decisions regarding the Redskins over the years that he's owned them, this boneheaded move should come as no real surprise.

To My Fellow Canadians

Vote as you will, but vote!

And if you don't vote, don't come bitching to me about the result because as far as I'm concerned if you don't participate you give up the right to complain about the government.

But Surely It Obvious?

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!


How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)
brought to you by Quizilla


Congratulations! If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be. You can smell a grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards. Your speech is revered by the underlings, though some may blaspheme and call you a snob. They're just jealous. Go out there and change the world.


4127 other people got this result!
This quiz has been taken 12976 times.
32% of people had this result.

Merry Christmas!

I had planned something far grander than this, but circumstances intervened (I fell asleep).

To all of you friends and gentle readers (two groups which with relatively few exceptions are not mutually exclusive) I wish as Merry a Christmas as this Child of TV had when this photo was taken and the best of this Festive Season whatever tradition and beliefs you might follow.

I Knew It!

You Are Japanese Food

Strange yet delicious. Contrary to popular belief, you're not always eaten raw.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Personally I prefer Turkey (dark meat hot or at least warm, white meat for sandwiches) but Sushi is high on my list. On the other hand some of the things the Japanese do with ice cream would be considered torture if fed to POWs.

To my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving from a country which has yet to perfect the four day weekend.

Remembrance

I am Canadian. I wear the poppy. In Canada November 11 is perhaps the second most important national commemoration of all. It is Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War. At 11 a.m. local time, in ceremonies across the country in communities big and small a bugler will blow the Last Post signifying the beginning of two minutes of silence. Despite the best efforts of veterans groups such as the Royal Canadian Legion, stores will be open, but in many if not most of them the two minutes of silence will also be marked. On this day we commemorate the dead in Canada's wars and peace keeping missions and the veterans who survived.

South Africa - 1899-1902: 244 dead
World War I - 1914-1918: 60,661 dead
World War II - 1939-1945: 42,042 dead
Korea - 1950-1953: 312 dead
Gulf War - 1991: No dead
Afghanistan - 2001-present: 4 dead
Peacekeeping missions from Suez in 1956 through the Congo, Cyprus, Croatia, Bosnia, Haiti and Rwanda.

Based on the Statistics Canada estimate of the Canadian population in 1914 (7,879,000), the number of dead during World War I represents slightly under 1% of the total population of the country and a significantly higher percentage of males between the ages of 18 and 50. It was a Canadian, Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Medical Corps who wrote the most famous poem about the First World War.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I am Canadian. I wear the poppy, and I wear it with pride and considerable emotion.